Keeping your spirits up

I suppose we can be forgiven for finding a bit of hope here and there.

Carrying gas masks and syringes of antidote, workers at the Umatilla Chemical Depot [at Hermiston, OR] used remote-controlled equipment to begin destroying nearly 4,000 tons of nerve gas rockets and other chemical weapons stockpiled since 1962. ...

An M-55 rocket loaded with sarin nerve agent was the first of more than 220,000 weapons scheduled to be destroyed, officials said. Workers had removed a pallet of 15 M-55 rockets from an earth-covered and concrete-reinforced storage igloo Tuesday.

The disposal process starts with robotic machinery removing the explosive charge, then punching open the warhead to drain about a gallon of deadly sarin into a storage tank.

The metal rocket would then be chopped into eight parts and run through a decontaminating furnace, one of four high-temperature incinerators at the sprawling facility in the northeastern corner of the state.

Exhaust from the incinerators would be sent through an afterburner and filters before being released into the atmosphere.

The operation is not without controversy; a local group called GASP has filed suit to stop the incineration, wanting it to be replaced with the newer chemical neutralization process. That process is used at four disposal sites; incineration is used at three, with another set to open in the spring.

The Umatilla Chemical Depot holds about 12 percent of the nation's remaining chemical weapons. The military began stockpiling rockets, artillery shells, bombs, land mines and sprayers containing nerve and mustard agents there beginning in 1962.

The 7.3 million pounds of weapons are scheduled to be destroyed by 2010 at a cost of $2.4 billion.

That date is, if memory serves, two years after the deadline originally established by an international agreement. But if better late then never was ever appropriate to a situation, this is the one.