The US is about to begin destroying its largest remaining stockpile of chemical-laden artillery shells, marking a milestone in the global campaign to eradicate a debilitating weapon that still creeps into modern wars.
The Pueblo Chemical Depot in southern Colorado plans to start neutralizing 2,358 tonnes of aging mustard agent next month as the US moves toward complying with a 1997 treaty banning all chemical weapons.
Pueblo has about 780,000 shells containing mustard agent, which can maim or kill, blistering skin, scarring eyes and inflaming airways. Mustard agent is a thick liquid, not a gas as commonly believed. It’s colorless and almost odorless, but got its name because impurities made early versions smell like mustard.
After nightmarish gas attacks in World War I, a 1925 treaty barred the use of chemical weapons, and the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention set a 2012 deadline to eradicate them. Four nations that acknowledged having chemical weapons have missed the deadline: the US, Russia, Libya and Iraq.
The US amassed 27,760 tonnes of chemical weapons, both mustard agent and deadly nerve agent, much of it during the Cold War. The US Army described them as a deterrent, and the US never used them in combat.
Nearly 90 percent of the US stockpile has been eliminated at depots in six states and Johnson Atoll in the Pacific, mostly by incineration.
The US Army will use two methods for the Pueblo stockpile. Next month, the first of an estimated 1,400 shells that are leaking or otherwise damaged will be placed in a sealed steel chamber with walls up to 23cm thick. Explosives will tear open the shells and the mustard agent will be neutralized with chemicals.
The remaining hundreds of thousands of shells will be run through a partially automated US$4.5 billion plant starting in December or January next year. It will dismantle the shells, neutralize the mustard agent in water and then add bacteria to digest and convert the remaining chemicals. The end product can be disposed of at a hazardous waste dump.
The plant can process up to 60 shells per hour, but the explosion chamber can destroy only six shells per day.
Pueblo expects to finish the job in 2019 — more than 55 years after some of the shells there were produced.
Blue Grass is not expected to start destroying weapons until next year or 2017, and finishing in 2023, US Army spokeswoman Kathy DeWeese said. All told, it is expected to cost about US$11 billion to destroy the remaining US chemical weapons.
Officials who oversee the Pueblo operation insist it is safe, citing years of careful planning and training, as well as the remote location — an empty expanse of sagebrush about 24km from the city’s outskirts.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to