Re: U.S. not legally bound to reveal Chemical Weapons dump sites
- From: "Jack Linthicum" <jacklinthicum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 14 Nov 2005 04:56:15 -0800
gbizzigo@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Apologies if this appears twice on somone's server; I tried to post it
> from one account, and it neither showed up on that server nor on
> Google, so I assume it sank without a trace.
>
> On Thu, 10 Nov 2005 01:11:07 -0500, "Howard C. Berkowitz"
> <hcb@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >In article <6HVbf.5618$2y.4829@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Mark
> >Test <MARKT38@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >> "Mike" <yard22192@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> >> news:1131325380.382070.64180@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> >> http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-a1_5dumpday2oct31,0,3757483.story?coll=all-
> >> news-hed
>
> >> > U.S. NOT LEGALLY BOUND TO REVEAL DUMP SITES
>
> >> If you're this freaked out about US dumping, you'll just love how much
> >> crap the Soviets dumped, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Australians, etc.,
>
> >> Probably a safe bet that sea water neutalizes most chemical weps.....
> >> but this reporter would not report that, if it were in fact true, now would
> >> he?
>
> The reported did a reasonably good job of reporting what he was told by
> his sources. As to whether sea water neutralizes chemical weapons, it's
> not such a simple question; it depends on the agent and where it was
> dumped.
>
> >I'd have to research it, but, from memory, mustard would be fairly
> >stable, chlorine and phosgene would vanish, and I suspect nerve agents,
> >unless ultrapure and in a persistent form, also would break up.
>
> Phosgene and G nerve agents react with sea water. They react with sea
> water sufficiently rapidly that no effects on sea life are expected
> more than a few hundred meters down current from a leaking container.
> Purity is not really an issue for these agents; this is based on their
> intrinsic chemical reactivity with water; these agents are sufficiently
> soluble that impurities and additives don't affect the process
> significantly.
>
> Mustard is persistent in sea water because it dissolves very slowly in
> water. However, once it dissolves, it reacts fairly rapidly. The result
> is that mustard leaking on the sea floor tends to form an immobile,
> plastic lump. No effects on sea life are expected more than a few
> centimeters down current. The real issue for mustard is that human
> activities (notably fishing) can bring these lumps to the surface,
> where people get exposed to them; there have been a few hundred
> injuries over the past 60 years from such activity.
>
> V nerve agents would be a serious environmental problem if dumped into
> the sea. However, to the best of my knowledge, this has not happened,
> because ocean dumping ended in the early 1970s and V agents only began
> to be produced in the mid 60s and were just being added to stockpiles
> when dumping ended.
>
> >The danger is less in actual leaks as shells and tanks that might be
> >fragile, and, if jarred, release a concentration.
>
> In our analysis, we begin by assuming that all containers will
> eventually leak. For deep-water sites, there is some evidence that
> containers ruptured on their way to the bottom because of the pressures
> involved. For shallow-water sites, corrosion will cause releases sooner
> or later. Physically disturbing the containers is only an issue if one
> is considering efforts such as seismic prospecting, which might cause
> simultaneous failures of many containers.
>
> For what it's worth, my personal judgment is that it may make some
> sense for chemical munitions dumped in deep water to be subject to
> periodic monitoring, but otherwise they are best left alone. The risks
> of attempting to recover these munitions, plus the political difficulty
> of building a treatment facility on shore are huge compared to the
> relatively minor environmental risks they currently pose. In essence,
> one exchanges a small risk of harm to tiny portions of an ecosystem for
> a larger risk to humans who have to recover the munitions and who live
> or work in the plants that will have to destroy them.
>
> As Andrew Chaplin has noted in this thread, the real risk is that
> people will disturb these sites and bring chemical agents to the
> surface. For that reason, shallow-water dump sites, which are a
> relatively small subset of all dump sites, are the real problem. Even
> for these sites, the current balance of risk/benefit suggests that they
> are best left alone, with precautions taken to minimize and mitigate
> exposures in areas with known exposure such as Bornholm in the Baltic,
> the Bari area in the Adriatic, and some areas around Japan.
>
> My question to anyone who advocates recovering these munitions is
> "where are you proposing to destroy these munitions?" If there is a
> community that wants a chemical agent destruction facility built
> locally, I have yet to see it. The US experience is that it is barely
> possible to build a consensus to site such facilities in communities
> that already have stocks of weapons; they'll accept the facility as the
> necessary price of removing the weapons from their backyards. To date,
> no one has volunteered to have weapons brought in from elsewhere;
> that's why the US has built 7 separate facilities and is planning to
> build 2 more. Who will volunteer to accept such a plant in their back
> yard to benefit the ocean life 50 miles off the coast and 7,000 feet
> down?
>
> Regards,
>
> George
>
> **********************************************************************
> Dr. George O. Bizzigotti Telephone: (703) 610-2115
> Mitretek Systems, Inc., MS Z313 Fax: (703) 610-1558
> 7525 Colshire Drive E-Mail: gbizzigo@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> McLean, VA 22102-7400
> **********************************************************************
The shallow water disposal sites are subject to legal and illegal
trawling on the bottom. The location is highly subjective, I would
guess that "close enough for government work" pre-GPS would place the
site anywhere. Precision diving using GPS locations often finds the
site is not where the GPS said it would be.
.
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