This article in the East Oregonian describes a Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program drill taking place at the Umatilla Chemical Depot this week. It’s pretty cool/terrifying stuff.

Here is a brief round up of some of the chemical weapons related news this week.

On April 29, the Japanese news site The Daily Yomiuri Online published an article in response to the corruption scandal involving Japanese cleanup of ACW in China. It gives a time line and outline of Japan’s ACW removal efforts to date.

Also on April 29 there was a news report that “Russia Destroys One-Third of Its Chemical Weapons”. Not exactly a figure that hasn’t been reported previously… but the article does bring up the enormous (and skyrocketing) cost of CW destruction.

Finally, yesterday there was news in the U.S. proclaiming “Pine Bluff Arsenal destroys first VX-filled landmine”. Horray! Just a few thousand more tonnes to go…

I just ran across this news story on the latest scandal related to the Japanese removal of Abandoned Chemical Weapons (ACW) from China.

Time Magazine also ran a story on the Japanese ACW just days before the Second Review Conference.

During the RevCon the Japanese delegation hosted a lunch event to showcase their efforts on destroying ACW in China. It was pretty interesting, videos were shown of 3 different excavation sites, one in a riverbed, one in a forest and one in between the buildings of a chemical plant. Each site had unique challenges, for example to remove ACWs from the riverbed, the river needed to be dammed and a pier removed to allow workers to excavate. Metal detectors used to locate the ACWs also located garbage and other foreign metal objects that were buried in the river. The take-home message that the Japaense delaegation was hoping to impress upon us was that they are working on it, but ACW recovery has not been an easy process.

Next challenge: actual destruction of the weapons.

Recovery difficulties coupled with an additional corruption scandal… It’s not unreasonable to wonder if they will have trouble meeting the destruction 2012 deadline.

Speaking of countries that will have trouble meeting the 2012 deadline – The Pueblo Chieftain reported this week that some of the construction of the Pueblo chemical weapon neutralizing facility will be delayed until 2009. Yikes!

This week U.S. Chemical Weapons destruction has been in the news. Construction has finally begun on the facility planned for the Pueblo, Colorado destruction site, and old chemical weapons found at Schofield Barracks in Honolulu, Hawai’i are being destroyed.

• “Army destroying old chemical munitions”, William Cole, HonoluluAdvertiser.com, April 9, 2008.

• “Army begins destruction of 71 chemical weapons”, William Cole, HonoluluAdvertiser.com, April 15, 2008. – This one also includes a little photo gallery of the weapons disposal facility.

• “Ground broken on facility to destroy chemical weapons”, The Denver Post, April 14, 2008.

• “Chem demil projects get under way”, John Norton, The Pueblo Chieftan, April 14, 2008.

In other news on chemical weapons destruction, Canadian researchers reported “an exciting new method for rapidly and safely destroying toxic agents such as chemical weapons and pesticides.” Apparently it works extremely quickly and the degradation products are non-toxic making it “a ‘green’ alternative to existing decontamination practices.”