Review of International Technologies for Destruction of Recovered Chemical Warfare Materiel

The Chemical Weapons Convention requires, among other things, that the signatories to the conventionwhich includes the United Statesdestroy by April 29, 2007, or as soon possible thereafter, any chemical warfare materiel that has been recovered from sites where it has been buried once discovered. For several years the United States and several other countries have been developing and using technologies to dispose of this non-stockpile materiel. To determine whether international efforts have resulted in technologies that would benefit the U.S. program, the U.S. Army asked the NRC to evaluate and compare such technologies to those now used by the United States. This book presents a discussion of factors used in the evaluations, summaries of evaluations of several promising international technologies for processing munitions and for agent-only processing, and summaries of other technologies that are less likely to be of benefit to the U.S. program at this time. Table of Contents Front Matter Executive Summary 1 Introduction and Background 2 Issues Bearing on Sites Containing Large Amounts of Buried Chemical Weapons Materiel 3 Evaluation Factors for International Destruction Technologies 4 Tier 1 International Munitions Processing Technologies 5 Tier 1 International Agent-Only Processing Technologies 6 Tier 2 International Technologies for Munitions and Agent-Only Processing 7 Assessing Large Burial Sites and Accessing Chemical Warfare Materiel Appendix A Tables Illustrative of a Variety of Non-Stockpile Items Appendix B Tier 1 Munitions Processing Evaluation Subfactor Comparative Tables Appendix C Tier 1 Agent-Only Processing Evaluation Subfactor Comparative Tables Appendix D Committee Meetings and Other Activities Appendix E Biographical Sketches of Committee Members