Last Nazi Chemical Weapons Destroyed in Utah

[MKSheppard]

Link

Salt Lake City - The nation’s largest chemical weapons depot has destroyed its final stockpile of nerve agent — a 4,100-pound supply seized by U.S. troops from Nazi Germany.

The Deseret Chemical Depot says the Nazi nerve agent had been stored in bulk containers since the end of World War II.

The Army depot in Utah’s west desert is ending a 15-year campaign of destroying a variety of chemical weapons.

Only small supplies of other chemical agents remain to be incinerated, and that job is expected to be completed by early next year.

The stockpiles are being destroyed under an international treaty to rid the world of chemical weapons.

The Deseret Chemical Depot, 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, once held more than 40 percent of the nation’s chemical weapons.

Link

Last Nerve Agent at Chemical Depot Targeted for Destruction

Workers assigned to the Area 10 Liquid Incinerator (ATLIC) project on Deseret Chemical Depot (DCD) today began destruction operations targeting the depot’s last stockpiled nerve agent - a relatively small quantity of bulk containers of GA agent, also known as Tabun (pronounced TAY-buhn).

GA destruction operations are expected to take no more than two weeks to complete. Following that, preparations will begin for the ATLIC’s final agent destruction campaign, targeting the depots Lewisite agent stockpile. The entire DCD chemical weapons stockpile is expected to be safely eliminated by early 2012.

Press Release

CHEMICAL DEPOT DESTROYS ALL REMAINING NERVE AGENT IN STOCKPILE

DESERET CHEMICAL DEPOT, STOCKTON, Utah -- Workers at the Area 10 Liquid Incinerator (ATLIC) today safely destroyed the last of the stockpiled nerve agent stored at Deseret Chemical Depot.

Incineration of the four GA nerve agent-filled bulk containers began less than two weeks ago at a smaller-scale incineration system located in the depot’s “Area 10,” where chemical agent-filled munitions have been stored since World War II.

The entire U.S. stockpile of GA nerve agent had been safeguarded by workers at the depot from the time the agent was seized by the U.S. in Nazi Germany near the end of World War II.

Preparations will soon begin for the ATLIC’s final agent destruction campaign targeting another relatively small stockpile, Lewisite blister-agent, while the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility nears completion of disposal operations for the few remaining mustard agent-filled munitions.

The entire DCD chemical weapons stockpile is expected to be safely eliminated by early 2012.

[Sea Skimmer]

How will we fend off the Red Chinese now!?

But on the brighter side, closing down this incinerator will save some serious money given that chemical demilitarization is costing billions a year.

[Lord Zentei]

How did it take 66 years to do this?

[Alyeska]

How did it take 66 years to do this?

It didn't. It took 15. The US was building a chemical weapons stockpile during the Cold War. It was only international treaties from the 90s that had the US destroying its stockpile.

[Ryan Thunder]

Would that stuff even work after 66 years?

[Lord Zentei]

15 years seems long enough in any case.

Anyway, while I know that the US used stuff like Agent Orange and napalm in the Cold War, I thought that nerve agents had been banned at the 3rd convention in Geneva in 1925. Or was the US not a signatory to that?

[Vejut]

I believe the US, and several other states never ratified it, but more or less took a position similar to the modern nuclear weapons approach--they wouldn't be the first to use them, but they weren't going to get rid of them in case somebody else used them first so they could reply in kind.

[PeZook]

Would that stuff even work after 66 years?

It probably would be much less effective, which is why they destroyed it close to the end of the process, but it would still not be safe enough to just dump into the sea, so it had to be properly incinerated.

[Simon_Jester]

15 years seems long enough in any case.

Disposing of large quantities of deadly poisonous chemicals in a safe fashion takes a long time, and it is not something you want to rush...

Anyway, while I know that the US used stuff like Agent Orange and napalm in the Cold War, I thought that nerve agents had been banned at the 3rd convention in Geneva in 1925. Or was the US not a signatory to that?

Zentei, nerve gas hadn't been invented yet in 1925; the Germans discovered them by accident in the '30s.

The US signed the Third Geneva Convention, which doesn't say a single thing about chemical weapons. The US also signed the Geneva Protocol, which is the one you were thinking of, in 1925. The Protocol prohibits the use of chemical weapons, but doesn't say anything making, storing, or moving these weapons.

Practically all the warring powers in WWII, and most major nations afterwards, had chemical weapon stockpiles. They just weren't used- recent treaties involved disposal, and just like the US, the Russians are still working through the small mountain of nerve gas and other stuff they stockpiled then.

[Lord Zentei]

Zentei, nerve gas hadn't been invented yet in 1925; the Germans discovered them by accident in the '30s.

I had thought it to be earlier.

But fair enough on the distinction between use and possession.

[Broomstick]

Of course, the poison gasses of WWI were still horrible, even if they weren't nerve agents.

I've heard that the nerve agents were mostly derived from insect pesticides, and while the Nazis didn't use them on the field of combat they were used in the death camps. Can one of our historian types confirm or deny that for me?

[evilsoup]

I think you're thinking of Zyklon B, the pesticide that was used in the gas chambers at Nazi death camps. I don't know if it was a nerve agent, though.

[PeZook]

Of course, the poison gasses of WWI were still horrible, even if they weren't nerve agents.

I've heard that the nerve agents were mostly derived from insect pesticides, and while the Nazis didn't use them on the field of combat they were used in the death camps. Can one of our historian types confirm or deny that for me?

Cyklon B was a cyanide-based pesticide ; It's essentially useless for combat purposes.

In fact, it's not even particularly deadly, that's why it was such a popular pest control agent all over the world. It's definitely not a nerve agent.

[Broomstick]

Zyklon B was a cyanide compound and not a nerve agent, and while it was a common means of exterminating people (as well as rodents, lice, etc) it wasn't the only agent used. I know carbon monoxide was another means of prisoner slaughter, though not as common. Were nerve agents used? I don't know for sure, but it's long been rumored.

[PeZook]

Zyklon B was a cyanide compound and not a nerve agent, and while it was a common means of exterminating people (as well as rodents, lice, etc) it wasn't the only agent used. I know carbon monoxide was another means of prisoner slaughter, though not as common. Were nerve agents used? I don't know for sure, but it's long been rumored.

I know Auschwitz used mostly Zyklon B (though fun fact: only 5% of all Zyklon B delivered to Auschwitz was used for murder...), and Majdanek was big on carbon monoxide.

The thing with nerve agents is that they were expensive ; There was no need to use them when you had full control over the people you subjected to the gas (who also happened to be malnourished and unhealthy) and could just ignore those incapacitated but not killed (why care: they'd die soon enough)

So...common pesticides were quite enough. Incidentally, this is where a lot of the holocaust denial myths come from: the gas chambers at Auschwitz, for example, are rather rickety structures that are not very airtight ; But this is quite reasonable, as there was no need to make them tight and secure at all, because the gas used was just not very dangerous UNLESS the victims were deliberately tightly packed together and were denied medical aid.

[Simon_Jester]

Zentei, nerve gas hadn't been invented yet in 1925; the Germans discovered them by accident in the '30s.

I had thought it to be earlier.

But fair enough on the distinction between use and possession.

Nobody wanted a ban on possession of gas stockpiles in 1925, to tell the truth- because everyone expected that in the next war, any existing treaty provisions on the use of chemical weapons would be ignored just like they had been in World War One. There were treaties against gas on the books in 1913; it's just that no one cared about them enough to not use gas when the alternative was a pure human wave attack against entrenchments. At least gas offered the chance of wiping out the defenders.

So all the major nations expected to need chemical weapons for the next war, while at the same time being willing to sign a resolution not to use them on the off chance that it would work.

[folti78]

The thing with nerve agents is that they were expensive ; There was no need to use them when you had full control over the people you subjected to the gas (who also happened to be malnourished and unhealthy) and could just ignore those incapacitated but not killed (why care: they'd die soon enough)

The G series nerve agents are both more lethal* and stay deadly longer(days to weeks, depending on the agent or the environment) than the pesticides. Using them would require more highly trained troops with more expensive protection gear and medical facilities and even the people cleaning up the gas chambers would need the said gear to not dropping dead in short time. Historically they survived being exposed to low levels of the gas in the chambers multiple times without any protection, although in time it took it's toll.

So...common pesticides were quite enough. Incidentally, this is where a lot of the holocaust denial myths come from: the gas chambers at Auschwitz, for example, are rather rickety structures that are not very airtight ; But this is quite reasonable, as there was no need to make them tight and secure at all, because the gas used was just not very dangerous UNLESS the victims were deliberately tightly packed together and were denied medical aid.

Also AFAIK the deniers like to "mistake" the gas chamber used to disinfect pest infested clothes with Zyklon B with the actual ones used for killing people. This chamber has a more rickety door, which wouldn't hold even a starved out mob inside but then, clothing won't try to break out.

* multiple people have been killed in accidents at the facilities the Nazi Germany used to manufacture the nerve agents, even before they decided to use gas chambers for the Holocaust.

[Sea Skimmer]

I
Nobody wanted a ban on possession of gas stockpiles in 1925, to tell the truth- because everyone expected that in the next war, any existing treaty provisions on the use of chemical weapons would be ignored just like they had been in World War One. There were treaties against gas on the books in 1913; it's just that no one cared about them enough to not use gas when the alternative was a pure human wave attack against entrenchments. At least gas offered the chance of wiping out the defenders.

So all the major nations expected to need chemical weapons for the next war, while at the same time being willing to sign a resolution not to use them on the off chance that it would work.

Well if you really want a distinction, a few people did want such a ban, and the Geneva Protocol of 1925 banned chemical and biological weapons, coming after the Washington Arms Conference which did the same thing, as well as a lot of other arms controls that never entered into force. The US didn't ratify Geneva until 1975, but some nations had done so by the early 1930s. Oddly the US then kept working on new chemical weapons anyway; I think we agreed to Geneva more for the bioagent clause then anything else as this was just as few years after NIXON abolished the US Germ Warfare Capability and supposedly had all records of our flea bombs physically destroyed....

Would that stuff even work after 66 years?

Not the desired degree, no but they'd still kill people like crazy without protection. Mind you, these Nazi agents are stored in 1,000 gallon tanks, not filled weapons. The stuff already filled into weapons is much worse to deal with, because while a bit newer then the 1940s newer the weapons leak like crazy (10 year design life... from 1960s) and often contain small explosive burster charges. The non Nazi filled munitions won't be destroyed for a long time to come. Much of this is all because the US never did a proper job modernizing its chemical arsenal, meaning that very old stuff was retained for retaliation, so one cloud of communist mustard gas didn't FORCE a nuclear war like the plan is today (BRILLIANT!) rather then being replaced and destroyed when they got old. The modest stock of the modernized 1980s US chemical weapons were all very easily destroyed in the early 1990s because they actually had been designed with this in mind and were not leaking like crazy. The US Army employed highly advanced means of detecting leaks... http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... rabbit.jpg

[Simon_Jester]

Well if you really want a distinction, a few people did want such a ban, and the Geneva Protocol of 1925 banned chemical and biological weapons, coming after the Washington Arms Conference which did the same thing, as well as a lot of other arms controls that never entered into force.

Huh. Guess I was confused about the rules- though I could have sworn the 1925 protocol banned use without banning stockpiling.

[PeZook]

The thing with nerve agents is that they were expensive ; There was no need to use them when you had full control over the people you subjected to the gas (who also happened to be malnourished and unhealthy) and could just ignore those incapacitated but not killed (why care: they'd die soon enough)

The G series nerve agents are both more lethal* and stay deadly longer(days to weeks, depending on the agent or the environment) than the pesticides. Using them would require more highly trained troops with more expensive protection gear and medical facilities and even the people cleaning up the gas chambers would need the said gear to not dropping dead in short time. Historically they survived being exposed to low levels of the gas in the chambers multiple times without any protection, although in time it took it's toll.

Yes, that too. Also you can get rid of cyanide compounds by simply ventillating the chamber ; They vaporize quickly and become harmless within hours. Scrubbing a gas chamber clean of nerve gas, well...

Their handling would also be terrible ; Zyklon B could be handled by a single soldier equipped with a simple mask, while you'd need full protection gear and medicl staff (like you mentioned) for nerve gas because if you get a pinhead sized drop on your skin you're dead.

Also AFAIK the deniers like to "mistake" the gas chamber used to disinfect pest infested clothes with Zyklon B with the actual ones used for killing people. This chamber has a more rickety door, which wouldn't hold even a starved out mob inside but then, clothing won't try to break out.

The deniers have many tricks up their sleeves, and yes that's one of them. They photograph wrong buildings and lie about their purpose, make absurd assumptions about necessary gas concentrations, test post-war replica chambers for cyanide residue and more. It's no wonder that the Auschwitz Museum stopped letting them do their thing on the grounds ; Even when people like Leuchter got support from the authorities, they proceeded to misrepresent their findings to support their agenda, so the museum rightly decided to fuck them.

[Sea Skimmer]

Huh. Guess I was confused about the rules- though I could have sworn the 1925 protocol banned use without banning stockpiling.

I dunno, been a long time since I looked at all the treaties, maybe that was all it was, but I recall that most of the handful people who signed on signed only with multiple reservations to basically negate the whole treaty. I'm pretty damn certain the earlier Washington Arms Conference was going to ban stockpiles as well, but it ran afoul its own absurdity of the French suggesting a ban of tanks over 97 tons, ban on war zepplines, ban on dropping bombs from airplanes ect...

Yes, that too. Also you can get rid of cyanide compounds by simply ventillating the chamber ; They vaporize quickly and become harmless within hours. Scrubbing a gas chamber clean of nerve gas, well...

No need to scrub really, you'd do it by blowing 140 degree F air through the chamber. This is how a fair bit of military decontamination works today for surfaces not directly exposed to liquid chemical agent. The need for scrubbing comes from the liquid or dense vapor actually soaking into materials, which you will NEVER get it out of completely, this leads to military measures like stripping off paint with high pressure bleach, but for a murder chamber hot air would probably suffice.

Their handling would also be terrible ; Zyklon B could be handled by a single soldier equipped with a simple mask, while you'd need full protection gear and medicl staff (like you mentioned) for nerve gas because if you get a pinhead sized drop on your skin you're dead.

Yeah, that'd be pesky. Also the Nazis simply never had enough nerve gas. Sarin was only produced on a small scale, and while they did make a fair bit of Tabun, a pretty massive amount was needed to be militarily decisive on the battlefield.

[PeZook]

No need to scrub really, you'd do it by blowing 140 degree F air through the chamber. This is how a fair bit of military decontamination works today for surfaces not directly exposed to liquid chemical agent. The need for scrubbing comes from the liquid or dense vapor actually soaking into materials, which you will NEVER get it out of completely, this leads to military measures like stripping off paint with high pressure bleach, but for a murder chamber hot air would probably suffice.

Really? Well, I never knew it was that easy, though still a fair bit harder than just opening the doors and sending in slave labor to clean the chamber off.

Yeah, that'd be pesky. Also the Nazis simply never had enough nerve gas. Sarin was only produced on a small scale, and while they did make a fair bit of Tabun, a pretty massive amount was needed to be militarily decisive on the battlefield.

Didn't their Tabun plant also have nasty accidents every other week?

[Sea Skimmer]

Really? Well, I never knew it was that easy, though still a fair bit harder than just opening the doors and sending in slave labor to clean the chamber off.

Well like I was saying... as long as it doesn't soak into stuff, it is that easy. The hot air method is how you deal with situations like aircraft cockpits or the interiors of other vehicles. Modern military equipment is coated in toxic in its own right chemical agent resistant paint to make decontamination easier by preventing soak in, but we still tend to use bleach because its much easier to spray around massive amounts of bleach then massive amounts of hot air. Though thinking about it, if you had a big enough hot air blower to quickly decontaminate a gas chamber, you could also just cook everyone in the chamber to death. Likely this would require too much fuel for Nazi tastes, as well as being a bit slow, but the real time consumer was dealing with the dead bodies. IIRC the gas chambers only murdered two or three batches of people per day because of how long that took.

Didn't their Tabun plant also have nasty accidents every other week?

Yup, it broke down like crazy because the intermediate process chemicals used to make Tabun are highly corrosive, still absurdly toxic, and would eat through all the piping. Pipes had to be silver plated to prevent this, but plating the interior joints of pipes after you screwed them together is easier said then done. Result was major leaks, dozens of gallons or even hundreds in some cases. Often right down onto workers heads, the workers had rubber suits for protection which didn't work too well if that happened. The end product Tabun was not as corrosive but still caused all kinds of problems. They also had to seal up certain working chambers with glass as Tabun related vapor from constant leaks would eat through the walls! As a result while the plant was built in 1939, it did not produce the gas full scale until 1942. Around 12,000 tons was produced. Sarin is much easier to make, as shown by that crazy Japanese cult, but work began later and a full scale plant was never finished so only a few tons were produced during the war.

[JointStrikeFighter]

WRT hot air decontamination didn't the soviets have jet engines mounted on the back of trucks for said purpose?

[madd0ct0r]

I thought those were mine clearers? or were there multiple reasons to put a je engine on the back of a truck?