Army to destroy leaking nerve agent container

[unhappycamper]

Army to destroy leaking nerve agent container
By Jeffrey McMurray - The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Nov 11, 2008 6:11:18 EST

RICHMOND, Ky. — The U.S. Army is expected to begin draining and neutralizing a container of lethal nerve agent on Wednesday, almost 15 months after a one-gallon leak was identified at a Kentucky storage site for chemical weapons.

After months of assuaging environmental and community concerns, the Army said on Monday that a mobile biological agent unit deployed from Maryland would begin handling the steel container and two similar ones held in a bunker at Blue Grass Army Depot, about 20 miles southeast of Lexington.

The project named “Operation Swift Solution” hasn’t gone as swiftly as hoped, but Army officials said they expected the project would solve the problem.

Although small vapor leaks are routine and largely benign at the stockpile of Cold War-era chemical weapons in Richmond and other sites nationwide, the sarin leak that occurred there Aug. 27, 2007, represented the largest and one of the most serious on record at the depot.

Sarin, first developed as a pesticide in Germany in 1938, attacks the central nervous system and can cause death within hours in severe cases.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/11/ap_army_nerve_gas_111008/%2e