The prospect of imminent US air strikes on Syria receded this week, after Russia pressured embattled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad into agreeing to give up his chemical weapons (CW). While weapons experts warn that it could take years to destroy all of Syria's poisons, New Scientist has learned that the US has been developing game-changing technology to rapidly destroy CW in a foreign country.
In February, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency commissioned the US's leading chemical defence lab to design a self-sufficient mobile plant that can safely destroy CW agents – and can be deployed anywhere in the world at short notice. Unusually, it wanted a prototype ready within just 20 weeks.
Working round the clock, the US Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC) in Maryland finished the prototype on schedule, and in June handed it over to the military agency that acquires new chemical-defence equipment.
The system, called the Field Deployable Hydrolysis System (FDHS), has now been adopted by the Pentagon for chemical weapons destruction, says an ECBC spokesperson. "More units will soon be produced."
99.9 per cent neutralised
The FDHS pumps agents such as sarin or mustard gas into an 8330-litre titanium tank, where they are mixed with water, sodium hydroxide and bleach and heated to just under boiling point. This triggers hydrolysis, which splits large molecules split into smaller fragments through a chemical reaction with water.
The US developed the hydrolysis method to destroy its own CW stockpile, as required under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. But previously, it has only been used in large, static plants.
The FDHS takes 3 hours to destroy 99.9 per cent of the toxic agent in a single given load, and can process 5 to 25 tonnes of CW per day, depending on the agent. It creates a large amount of effluent – up to 14 times the volume of CW that went in – but unlike CW, this can be disposed of at commercial hazardous hazardous-waste facilities. Agents such as sarin are too dangerous to destroy in normal commercial incinerators. No facilities to destroy it safely are known to exist in Syria.
Just add CW
The system has redundant components, such as additional generators, for safety. It also includes equipment to decontaminate not only the air outflow, but also any staff that might get contaminated. A separate laboratory section has gas chromatographs and mass spectrometers to identify the incoming CW, and to confirm that the treated effluent meets safety requirements.
The system, which comes packed in a few shipping containers, can be up and running within 10 days of arrival. It is run by a staff of 15.
The FDHS is designed to tackle CW that is stored in bulk containers. Syria is thought to have hundreds of tonnes of mustard gas and sarin. Is unknown how much has been loaded into munitions, which are harder to destroy: it is hazardous to extract the highly toxic CW from rockets or shells, which also contain explosives. Japan has developed a portable unit that destroys CW-filled munitions, but very slowly, one at a time.
Logistics of destruction
Even if the FDHS can be made available in Syria, destroying Assad's CW will be demanding. "This has never been done in the midst of a civil war," says Oliver Meier, an arms-control expert at the University of Hamburg in Germany.
The Syrian government is expected first to declare what CW it possesses, and then consolidate them in one or more locations – if rebel forces agree a ceasefire to permit this. One possibility is the Russian naval base at Tartus in Syria.
Then, in theory, destruction might begin. CW destruction is normally verified by experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague, the Netherlands. But they are not trained or equipped to operate in a war zone. International troops may need to be deployed to protect the weapons and the staff charged with destroying them.
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