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:
“We are close to dead. There are faces and bodies like gorged maggots on the dance floor, on the highway, in the city, in the stadium; they are a host of chemical machines who swallow the product of chemical factories, aspirin, preservatives, stimulant, relaxant, and breathe out their chemical wastes into a polluted air. The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91)
“There are risks which are not acceptable: the destruction of humanity is one of them.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)