The last stockpiles of a deadly chemical agent in the U.S. have been safely eliminated, according to Kentucky officials in charge of destroying the Cold War-era weapons.
The final M55 rocket containing VX nerve agent was destroyed Tuesday at the Blue Grass Chemical Agent plant near Richmond.
Officials at the plant began disassembling about 18,000 of the rockets and draining the VX agent in July, according to a news release from plant officials.
Candace Coyle, the plant’s project manager, said Wednesday the nation’s entire stockpile of VX nerve agent “is now completely destroyed.”
VX is considered the deadliest of the chemical agents that was produced by the U.S., much of it in the 1960s. It has a consistency similar to motor oil and even a tiny amount causes victims’ bodies to flood with fluids, producing a feeling of drowning before death. Officials in 2017 declared that assassins used VX agent to kill the brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in a Malaysian airport.
The Kentucky Army depot still has 277 tons of other chemical agents left to be destroyed, after beginning with more than 520 tons of VX, GB and mustard agent that was in storage for decades. Officials said it all should be gone by next year after it began eliminating its mustard agent stockpiles in 2019.
(Photo: Jeff Brubaker, site manager at the Blue Grass Chemical Agent Destruction Pilot Plant, points to a cylinder that will be used to move deadly chemical weapons from storage to a new facility where they will be destroyed, courtesy of the Associated Press)
The Associated Press
