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Video Interview

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An Overview of the Destruction of Chemical Weapons

3:33

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Transcript

Destruction of Chemical Weapons Overview

My name is Allan Poole, we are sitting here in Siberia on the way to one component of the work we are doing. In the Global Partnership, we cover a lot of areas related to weapons of mass destruction in Russia. One of the key areas that we deal with is the old chemical weapons that have been produced.

In Russia there are seven facilities that we are dealing with overall. We have actually focused on one, which we are going to right now, you have seen that is a part of Russia which is kind of isolated and that is something that you will notice as well, it is isolated as are the other facilities.

We've chosen this one because it has some of the most dangerous lethal weapons the Russians have produced. They produced these as part of the cold war legacy.

These are artillery shells that are very portable, that are very robust, they are relatively easy to steal compared to other some of the other weapons that exist in Russia.  There is 1.9 million of the shells and each one has enough agent in there that if it were used optimally, it could kill tens of thousands of people.

This is a facility that has 5000 tonnes of nerve agents. Nerve agents are a generation removed from the old mustard gas the types of gas that were used in the First World War. These are much deadlier in very, very small quantities if they end up touching just your skin is enough to cause death almost within a minute or two.

These are old artillery shells, they are stored warehouse, several hundred thousand per warehouse. It is kind of like looking at old wine racks and see wine bottles, but these are artillery shells with the deadly agents inside them.

The idea is that these will be transported to a facility that is further away from populated areas. It is 18km away from the storage area and it is a full destruction area which will take these shells, transport them to the area. They will be drilled, drained and the shells with remnants in them will be melted afterwards and incinerated so that there is no residue left over of any consequence.

The idea is that 1.9 million shells will just disappear and that by doing so 5000 tonnes of these agents will no longer be a problem that we face, because these weapons are very easily portable. It is not a question of if they ever fall in the hands of terrorist, it is a question of when. You cannot just secure this many weapons forever so we have to get rid of them before a few of them disappear

It is like looking at wine bottles; if there is 1.9 million of them they can disappear, even just two or three disappearing it is hard to really notice that they are gone. They are covered with dummies so nobody knows that they are gone. In the meantime nobody has their hands on these agents, VX, and they can use it in other weapons in other places. And these can be used in Canada or anywhere else in the world.

Last Updated:2006-11-03

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