Government & Policy Roundup

On March 1, Russia began destroying its chemical weapons stored at Kambarka in the Udmurt Republic. The site holds 6,360 metric tons of lewisite and an arsenic-based blistering agent. It is the second destruction facility to be opened by the Russians.

An upgraded version of the NIST Structural Database is now available. The database is a compilation of chemical data and 3-D crystal structures for about 20,000 materials.

India will be the first foreign country to participate in the Department of Energy's FutureGen project, an initiative to build the first coal-based power plant that removes and sequesters carbon dioxide while producing electricity and hydrogen. DOE says the Indian government will contribute $10 million to the $1 billion demonstration project.