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Fuck almighty, didn't realize the military had so much VX so close to a city. This is even more of a hazard than bird flu.
A single drop of VX on a pinhead will kill you in a minute and we've got 250,000 gallons of it??? WTF? Like when would we really ever need to use that much of it?
Full Story:
NEWPORT, Ind. - An Army contractor halted destruction of the deadly nerve agent VX after about 300 gallons of wastewater spilled at the complex built to destroy the Cold War-era chemical weapon.
No one was injured, but it was the fourth spill at the Newport Chemical Depot since the destruction of the VX stock pile began last May, officials said.
Depot spokeswoman Terry Arthur said Wednesday that investigators were still trying to determine what caused the caustic wastewater, called hydrolysate, to leak from one of the complex's two chemical reactors.
Hydrolysate is created by during the destruction of VX. The nerve agent itself is so deadly a single droplet can kill a human within minutes, but the hydrolysate contains no active VX, Arthur said.
The wastewater remained inside a sealed area, said Lt. Col. Scott Kimmell, the depot's commander. He said the spill happened during routine maintenance work.
Of the three previous spills since June, the largest involved about 490 gallons of hydrolysate that spilled when degraded gaskets failed in October.
After each, the chemical neutralization project was stopped until Army contractor Parsons Technology Inc. could determined the cause and made repairs.
The process is expected to create 2 million to 4 million gallons of wastewater.
The Army reported that as of Tuesday about 33,375 gallons of VX had been destroyed - about 13 percent of the more than 250,000 gallons originally stored at the depot 30 miles north of Terre Haute.
A federal review continues into the Army's plan to ship the hydrolysate to a DuPont Co. plant in New Jersey for final treatment and disposal into the Delaware River.
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