SARATOV. Dec 2 (Interfax-AVN) - The administration of the Saratov region does not support environmentalists' proposal to suspend the construction of the chemical weapons scrapping facility in the town of Gorny.
The facility must be put in operation on time, the press service of the region's governor said in a statement on Monday. "Emotions must not prevail over common sense. The plant's safety is proven by scientists, and we all will make sure of it soon. Chemical weapons are a woe and me must destroy them. The facility must be launched and will be launched," the statement reads.
The press service quotes Governor Dmitry Ayatskov as saying that there is still a lot of work to do to develop the village's social infrastructure. "A sewerage system will be established there in the near future, and gas will be supplied to all houses. The village will even have its own cathedral," the governor stressed.
The facility in Gorny is Russia's first full-scale chemical weapons destruction plant. It will test in practice the technologies that will later be mastered at the second Russian facility in Kambarka, the Udmurtian autonomous republic, where most of Russia's lewisite is stored. Lewisite amounts for about 20 percent of the total volume of Russian chemical weapons. The facility in Gorny is to destroy 1,142t of Category I poisonous gases, i.e. lewisite and yperite, before 2005.