Chemical Weapons Destruction
BGAD stores a small stockpile of chemical agents, comprising 523 tons of nerve agents GB (sarin) and VX, and mustard gas, or about two percent of the United States chemical weapons stockpile.
Beginning in 2003, destruction of the Blue Grass chemical weapons stockpile, in accordance with the Chemical Weapons Treaty, was contracted out using a technology known as neutralization followed by supercritical water oxidation. This is a different method than the incineration that is used at the larger stockpiles.
Groundbreaking for the chemical destruction facility took place on October 28, 2006. Final design of the facilities should be complete in 2010 and actual construction in 2018, after which destruction of the weapons will begin.
Read more about this topic: Blue Grass Army Depot
Famous quotes containing the words chemical, weapons and/or destruction:
“If Thought is capable of being classed with Electricity, or Will with chemical affinity, as a mode of motion, it seems necessary to fall at once under the second law of thermodynamics as one of the energies which most easily degrades itself, and, if not carefully guarded, returns bodily to the cheaper form called Heat. Of all possible theories, this is likely to prove the most fatal to Professors of History.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“Boys should not play with weapons more dangerous than they understand.”
—E.T.A.W. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Wilhelm)
“The true gardener then brushes over the ground with slow and gentle hand, to liberate a space for breath round some favourite; but he is not thinking about destruction except incidentally. It is only the amateur like myself who becomes obsessed and rejoices with a sadistic pleasure in weeds that are big and bad enough to pull, and at last, almost forgetting the flowers altogether, turns into a Reformer.”
—Freya Stark (1893–1993)