Safety problem of CW stockpiling and destruction is an issue of primary
importance. The monitoring of CW stockpiling and destruction facilities
provides for:
- Control of work (technological) zone:
- Emergency signaling system
- Health safety signaling system
- Allowable discharge limits control system
- Control of industrial site
- Periodic sampling of air, soils and waters followed by analysis
in laboratory
- Control of medical safety zone
- Periodic sampling of air, soils and waters followed by analysis
in laboratory
- Monitoring of protective action zone (residential zone)
- Periodic sampling of air, soils, waters, greenery and others
on stationary, route posts and sample plots followed by analysis
in laboratory
Normative and technical documents, adopted in Russia, hardly regulate
processes of CW stockpiling and destruction, as well as determine corresponding
requirements for facilities and personnel.
Safety
Standards of the Russian Federation determine maximum allowable
concentrations and levels of CW agents, causing no biological effect on
person and other objects of animate nature. By the way these safety standards
are still almost ten times less then those adopted in USA. The essential
requirement of the Convention when developing the technology of CW destruction
is to provide human beings security and environment protection. The fact
of convenience of the Russian technology for CW destruction is acknowledged
by the independent examination at the level of the IUPAC Commission. The
technology provides for discrete and sequential destruction of limited
quantity of toxic substances, contained in one ammunition, that ensures
its quick localization in case of emergency. In the process while content
of one munition is not sent in decontamination solution, the next one
will not be opened. The reaction products are being held in a reactor
until then, while the analysis (the combination of biochemical and physicochemical
methods) will not fix the absence of chemical agent in reaction mass.
Thereon, as warfare chemical agent is not deactivated completely, the
produced reaction mass is put on retreatment with obligatory use of other
decontaminant. Such process provides the complete safety of transportation
of products of munitions deactivation and/or reaction mass to operating
facilities for CW destruction and/or processing of reaction mass. Indeed,
on the first stage the reaction mass with median lethal dose of LD50>
1,500 mg/kg (the 3rd class of danger) is being formed, but on the second
stage the bitumen-salt mass with median lethal dose of LD50> 5,000 mg/kg
(the 4th class of danger) is being formed. The volume of transportation
of especially dangerous materials (the first class of danger), conventional
for developed countries, for instance, chlorine in tanks is 200 thousand
tons per year, and this is in case, that chlorine is 400 times more toxic
than reaction mass.