The military is scheduled to ship a first batch of waste ammunitions, including bombs and missiles, to Germany for disposal in July or August, defense sources said yesterday.
It will be the first time the military has sent its waste ammunitions abroad for disposal.
A total of 8,400 tonnes of waste ammunitions are to be shipped to Germany by January.
The project is set to be completed by the end of next year at a cost of NT$950 million.
The Logistics Command, which is in charge of the project, signed a contract in April with German company ISL for the treatment of the waste ammunitions after ISL won the bidding for the contract.
The waste munitions to be shipped to Germany are of kinds that the military is not capable of handling for lack of facilities and personnel.
They include large quantities of land mines, bombs, artillery shells, ship-borne gun shells and missiles which the military has left untreated for many years after retiring them.
More waste munitions are stored Kinmen and Matsu islands, and there are no plans to dispose of these soon.
The waste munitions stored on Kinmen, said to amount to over 10,000 tonnes, are not easy to deal with since they have been buried deep in mountain tunnels that have been sealed with concrete.
How to properly dispose of these munitions is becoming a big problem for the military.
The waste munitions stored on Taiwan are easier to deal with since they have not been treated in the same way as those on Kinmen. The military did not take action to solve the long-term waste munitions problem across the country until recently, after it came in for criticism from lawmakers and the press.
In 1990, the Logistics Command created the first munitions disposal unit, which could handle 27 kinds of ammunition of calibers under eight inches. The unit, located in Kaohsiung, was established with technical assistance from a German company.
But the unit has not been much help to the military because of its limited capabilities.
The military still has to ask for assistance from a foreign country to handle the large variety and amount of unused munitions, which have accumulated over the past few decades.
The Ministry of National Defense (MND) started accepting bids last year for the overseas treatment of waste munitions.
The bidding was won by ISL, which bid NT$690 million.
RSS