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Old 26-10-2011, 08:58 AM
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Sunny U.S. Destroyed their last of powerful bomb class

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (REUTERS) -- The last of a powerful class of nuclear weapons introduced into the U.S. arsenal at the height of the Cold War in 1962 was being dismantled on Tuesday at a nuclear weapons storage facility outside Amarillo, Texas.


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"This was one of the largest bombs in the American arsenal," said Joshua McConaha, Public Affairs Director for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.
He said the exact strength of the bomb -- known as the B53 and being dismantled at the DOE's B&W Pantex facility -- remains classified, but it is believed to have been many hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.
The B53 was a megaton-class nuclear explosive that weighed approximately 10,000 pounds and was the size of a minivan. It was designed to be dropped onto a target by a massive B-52 Stratofortress strategic bomber. McConaha says it contained about 300 pounds of high explosive surrounding the uranium, referred to as 'the pit.'
"The world is a safer place with this dismantlement," said Thomas D'Agostino, Under Secretary of Energy and Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration.
"The B53 was a weapon developed in another time for a different world. Today, we are moving beyond the Cold War nuclear weapons complex that built this type of weapons..."
McConaha said the process of eliminating the massive nuclear weapons, known by Pantex workers as "the last of the big dogs," began 14 years ago.
"It started with retiring a weapon from active or inactive service," he said. "In this case, President Clinton did that back in the nineties, in 1997."
He says many B53s were actually retired before that, but a "significant number" had remained in the U.S. arsenal.
In addition to challenges related to the bomb's massive size and awesome explosive punch, the dismantlement process was made more difficult by the weapon's use of older technology developed by engineers who have since died.
Taking apart one of the most powerful nuclear weapons ever created is done "very carefully," McConaha said.
"You start out slow and methodically, and you pay a lot of attention to safety. There is an incredible attention to detail."
The explosive is carefully separated from the nuclear materials, he said. Some materials will be reused, while most of the bomb is shredded and disposed of.
The number of B53s which were once in service, and the number disassembled at Pantex, remains classified, but McConaha confirmed Tuesday's bomb was the final one. He said the dismantling has been completed four years ahead of schedule.


Chemical weapon stockpile destroyed at Oregon's Umatilla site (LA Times)

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The last of the stockpile of chemical weapons in Umatilla Army Depot U.S. Chemistry has been successfully burned.

For nearly 50 years, was the death trap door next: 3.7 tons of nerve gas and blister agent, a large part of U.S. chemical weapons stockpile, stored in a warehouse near the small town of Hermiston, Oregon

The last Tuesday of each month, 76 large sirens mounted on poles 50 feet through three counties that emit a burst of sweet sound Westminster bells, followed by the assurance that this was just a drill - if not, a strong noise have played in place and residents have known that a pen of some of the worst poisons on Earth is headed their way.

On Tuesday, the sirens sounded for the last time - just hours after the end of the chemical agents were destroyed. The efforts to eliminate three years marked one of the final chapters of once massive U.S. buildup of weapons of mass destruction.

The last ton of mustard gas was burned successfully Umatilla at 9:17 am, leaving the U.S. with only three of the nine storage sites of chemical weapons originals, the latter of which is slated for total elimination in 2023. Caches even deadlier nerve agent VX and sarin were destroyed earlier in the north of the Oregon facility.

"It's a great thing for a community that the risk has gone, and we can have one less thing to worry about," said Jodi Florence Agency Umatilla County Emergency Management, part of the Chemical Stockpile Program emergency preparedness in an interview.

"Today, employees at the plant Umatilla Chemical Agent disposition made his mark in history to complete agent destruction operations," said Gary Anderson, site manager of the project, in a statement. "More than 1,000 dedicated employees and contractors have made Oregon Army safer for its citizens."

Umatilla had protected 12% of the nation's arsenal of original chemistry since 1962. However, with the end of the Cold War and a 1993 international convention prohibiting the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons, the work of destroying the deadly agents began in 2004.

An already difficult job

It was a formidable task. Loaded with poison liquid rockets, bombs, warheads, artillery shells and mines, designed to vaporize when it exploded, engineers had to design an incineration plant would not be as dangerous as the weapons themselves.

Not a drop or two of some deadly nerve agents in the skin may cause rapid death, miserable.

Disaster scenarios suggests that a large earthquake in the center, followed by fire, could send a column of toxic waste in Portland, Seattle and Spokane. Most of the deaths in an accident, however, is expected to occur in the small towns of northern Oregon and southern Washington and surrounding facilities have relied on it for about 1,300 jobs pay well.

The period laid down in the International Convention for the destruction of the reserves is 2012, but the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks prompted the military said in a different kind of urgency, storage tanks throughout the country potentially targets invited for the attack or looting.

Several technologies were studied, with the Army to place in a controversial process of incineration in kilns capable of reaching 2700 degrees Fahrenheit, enough to quickly destroy poisons, with slightly less intense furnaces to melt their metal containers with little danger of the release.

A number of organizations including the Sierra Club and the Working Group on Chemical Weapons, treated with strength through the courts to stop the incineration program, conducted at sites in Alabama, Arkansas, Utah and Oregon (some other used a less controversial deposits the water to neutralize the elimination method).

Efforts to stop the destruction

They argued that small amounts of dioxins dangerous, furans, mercury and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons could be released through the chimney during incineration, which, possibly dangerous low-level exposures to nearby people who ate from their gardens or children breastfed.

Bob Palzer, chemical weapons coordinator in Oregon Sierra Club, said very little to monitor emissions of other chemicals that are carried out.

"The type of monitoring at the site did not detect emissions [other materials] in a timely manner. They were specifically looking for the agent, but in reality there would be other compounds that are almost as dangerous, and had not actually control for that, "said Palzer in an interview.

Army officials said extensive research had shown that transactions involving "any significant impact on human health."

The Department of Environmental Quality Oregon in its own risk assessment indicated that the probability of causing cancer, exposure is limited to an area immediately adjacent to the incinerator, where no one lived. Outside the fence of deposit, "should not have adverse effects on health," the assessment.

A federal judge in 2009, agreed.

The project had problems as they occurred. A worker was exposed to a small amount of mustard blister agent in 2010 and developed a blister on his hip, despite wearing rubber protective equipment. That incident prompted retraining of workers at the facility.

In September 1999, about 30 construction workers building the incinerator were overcome by clear exposure of an unknown substance. They argued unsuccessfully in a subsequent trial that the substance was an agent for chemical weapons.

Mostly, however, people living with the ever present, though very unlikely, the possibility of a catastrophic scenario - a cloud of nerve gas drifting toward the village.

Given the risk

Warning sirens were designed for that possibility. Local residents were also equipped with tone alert radios to warn and updates in the case of a leak. Many houses had large plastic sheets and duct tape to seal their homes if the day came.

"Shelter in place simply means entering his house, closing doors and windows, turn off the fans and any type of air system that carry air to his house, and only remain there until the emergency has passed," said Florence .

Nobody needed.

In the end, the warning sirens never went beyond the gentle Big Ben bell test and quiet back.

"Chemical weapons have been stored safely and successfully right here at age 49. It's been a long history, and a number of people in the community, several generations of families have been used here in the station, "said Michael Fletcher, a spokesman for Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility, in an interview.

"So we're talking about satisfaction with a job well done, and realize that in making the nation safer, have worked themselves out of a job."







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