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Energy

Russian Facility Will Scrap Chemical Arms

by Glenn Hess
December 6, 2010 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 88, Issue 49

Russia has brought a sixth plant on-line to destroy its Cold War-era chemical weapons stockpile. The new facility at Pochep, located 250 miles southwest of Moscow, will eliminate about 7,500 metric tons of munitions loaded with nerve agents such as VX, sarin, and soman. Russia once possessed the world’s largest arsenal of chemical warfare materials, about 40,000 metric tons. As a signatory of the Chemical Weapons Convention, an international treaty that bans the production, storage, and use of such weapons, the country has so far destroyed about half of its stockpile. However, Russia acknowledged earlier this year that it would miss the treaty’s April 2012 deadline for eliminating its entire arsenal. Total destruction of the nation’s chemical arms is expected to take until 2015. “All commitments will have been fulfilled by this time,” says Valery Kapashin, head of the Federal Directorate for Safe Storage & Destruction of Chemical Weapons. Pochep is expected to destroy its stock of chemical weapons by the end of 2014.

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