High toxic acid type oxidizer for rocket fuel stored at the Russian Pacific Fleet's depots in Vladivostok is to be completely removed from the city by the end of 2001.
The Vladivostok city administration has been working to get the rocket fuel components belonging to the Pacific Fleet removed out of the city territory since summer of 2000, the press center of the administration has told Interfax. A total of 280 tonnes of high toxic oxidizer are stored in Vladivostok in conditions far from being safe, it said.
The city administration has recently received a letter signed by Russian Chief of General Staff Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin. The letter reads that Vladivostok Mayor Yuri Kopylov's request addressed to President Vladimir Putin has been examined, and the Defense Ministry plans to resolve the problem of the disposal of oxidizer in the near future.
A total of 1.035 tonnes of rocket oxidizer will be transported from the depots of the Pacific Fleet and Far Eastern military district to the European part of Russia for disposal in 2001, Kvashnin's letter reads. In the first quarter of the year, 520 tonnes of oxidizer from the depots located within Vladivostok and in its near vicinity will be disposed of. The remaining rocket fuel components will be removed after a plant for reprocessing of oxidizer, which is being constructed in Krasnoyarsk under international aid for destroying strategic armaments, is put into operation.
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