In went artillery shells filled with deadly mustard agent that the Army had been storing for more than 70 years.
The bright yellow robots pierced, drained and washed each shell, then baked it at 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
Out came inert and harmless scrap metal, falling off a conveyor belt into an ordinary brown dumpster with a resounding clank.
“That’s the sound of a chemical weapon dying,” said Kingston Reif, who spent years pushing for disarmament outside government and is now the deputy assistant secretary of defense for threat reduction and arms control.
The destruction of the stockpile has taken decades, and the Army says the work is just about finished.
The depot near Pueblo destroyed its last weapon in June; the remaining handful at another depot in Kentucky will be destroyed in the next few days.
And when they are gone, all of the world’s publicly declared chemical weapons will have been eliminated. »
