Between 2AM and 5AM on the morning of August 21, 2013, the temperature in Ghouta, Syria, was falling, meaning that air was sinking towards the ground, rather than rising. When surface-to-surface rockets landed in the eastern Damascus suburb and released a colourless, odourless liquid that turned into vapour, the gas did not float away: instead it drifted into the basements and lower levels of buildings where people were sheltering from the barrage.
Those in hiding quickly found their eyes becoming irritated and their noses began to run. It became difficult to breathe. Further symptoms followed: disorientation, nausea and vomiting. When help arrived – including doctors and nurses who lived nearby – they found large numbers of people on the ground, unconscious or dead.
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Those who came to assist soon succumbed themselves: one of them later said he felt a "sensation of impending doom" before fainting.
Within hours, videos of the events in Ghouta were uploaded to YouTube. They showed rows of dead bodies, including children. There is no definitive death toll, but foreign intelligence agencies, international media and human rights groups estimate that at least a few hundred people died -- Médecins Sans Frontières says it treated at least 3,600 patients, of whom 355 died. UN weapons inspectors, already in Syria to investigate an alleged chemical attack elsewhere, shifted focus to Ghouta. A daily five-hour ceasefire was agreed between August 26 and 29. The inspectors visited the suburb, where they were shot at – with both sides blaming the other – to collect medical samples, take statements and photograph the remains of rockets.
They soon confirmed that the nerve agent sarin – which quickly kills by attacking the human nervous system – had been used. Both the Syrian government and the rebel forces denied responsibility.
On September 14, representatives from the Russian Federation and US government met in Geneva and signed a document that undertook to eliminate chemical weapons from Syria. The Syrian government, under political pressure and military threat, agreed that it would sign the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), an arms treaty that aims to eliminate their production, stockpiling and use. Finally, a plan to destroy Syria's chemical weapons was endorsed by the UN. The organisation just needed a way to do it.
Eight months earlier, on December 27, 2012, Adam Baker was sitting at his desk at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center when he was invited into a colleague's office for a briefing. ECBC, as it's called by those who work there, is a huge US Army laboratory and testing ground a few kilometres northeast of Baltimore. Baker, 31, had joined ECBC as a chemical engineer in 2005, after studying the subject at nearby University of Maryland. "This is kind of a hub for all the chemical, and biological, related parts of the [US] Department of Defense," he says, "Most of them are centred here, so it's a good place for chemical engineers to end up."
Baker was told about a high-level meeting with the US Department of Defense (DoD) at which he and his team had been given the task of figuring out how to destroy and dispose of hundreds of tonnes of liquid chemical agents and precursors (agents are immediately usable as weapons; precursors are ingredients which can be used to make chemical weapons). If no suitable technology existed, the DoD wanted to know what technology could be manufactured quickly. "At that point, the project was not very well defined," Baker says. "There was an expectation from many of us that this would be either the start of a long-term acquisition process or a short-term demonstration of the technologies available."
Baker's team, along with other US government departments, spent two weeks surveying the existing technology. Since joining ECBC he'd spent time disposing of US chemical weapons, mostly mustard gas in mortar rounds in the ground during remediation of former US military testing sites. The method for making them safe was to put the munitions in a sealed container, crack the shell with explosives, inject neutralising chemicals into the sealed container and mix it. It was effective for chemical agents in munitions, but it wasn't suitable for eliminating large quantities of liquid chemicals.
Another strategy ECBC had previously called upon was hydrolysis, which was also used to dispose of stockpiles of mustard gas. The process involves mixing the liquid chemical agent with water according to what Baker describes as "recipes" that have been refined over several years. Once the agent and water is mixed, neutralising chemicals are added (the type depends on which agent is being processed). This creates an effluent that is the equivalent of industrial chemical waste.
This approach was exactly what the DoD was searching for, but there was a snag: it also needed to be able to deploy the technology in the field. The DoD needed to set up close to the sites where chemical weapons are being stored and the hydrolysis system was not transportable because of its size. "It was basically a chemical plant," Baker says, "I couldn't give you a reliable estimate of its size, but in the region of tens of acres, I guess."
At a follow-up meeting, Baker's team explained that nothing effective and transportable currently existed. Potential solutions were discussed. Then Baker and his team were told something surprising: whatever solution they came up with would have to be built within six months. Baker knew it would be "difficult, bordering on impossible" to design and develop a completely new technology in that short timeframe, so they "indicated that hydrolysis was the best candidate". They just needed to shrink it.
Significantly.
Shrinking a chemical plant so it fits on a lorry is not easy.
They started work on a prototype in February 2013 (the design team comprised 20 people from ECBC and two other departments, though scores of others were involved). They already knew the process flows and recipes (such as where the liquid would go, how it should be mixed and in what ratios) from their experience with the existing hydrolysis system. To reduce the plant's size, they used computer drafting and specialist fabrication. After five months they revealed their creation: the Field Deployable Hydrolysis System. "We just call it the FDHS," says Baker. "No nicknames."
The FDHS is a chemical processing plant which fits into two six-metre-long containers that can be transported around the world.
It takes ten days to set up and is operated by a crew of 15 per shift. Its main components are a 8,300-litre titanium reactor which can treat 25 tonnes of chemical agent (or precursor) per day; a 15,000-litre water tank; a water heater; ventilation systems; interim holding tanks; a command and control centre; a laboratory; and power generators. It simply mixes the chemicals with water, then pumps out an effluent which is treated in the interim holding tanks. "Water is enough to destroy the compound," Baker says. "The byproducts of that are acidic – you end up with hydrochloric acid or hydrofluoric acid, both of which are difficult to store, hazardous and very dangerous. From the back end it will drain into the interim holding tanks where it will then be mixed with sodium hydroxide, which will neutralise the acids. "So the first step is to destroy the chemical agent. Then the second step is to render the waste a little less hazardous by adding sodium hydroxide. Once that comes out [of the interim storage tanks] you basically have a solution that's a pH between seven and 12, just some salt products of the reaction in an alkaline environment. The analogy that people keep using is that it's like household drain cleaners."
The effluent that comes out of the interim holding tanks is transferred to large mobile containers which can be towed by lorries – the kind you see being used to transport liquid chemicals on British roads. They are taken to a commercial industrial waste facility, where such substances are routinely disposed of.
Baker and his team proudly unveiled their prototype in June 2013. Then Ghouta happened.
"I can't speak for everyone in the team," he says, "but prior to that I had the impression this was something we were building just in case. It seemed exceedingly unlikely that it would ever actually get used in Syria. It didn't look like that was something that was on the cards, and when that attack happened, and then the aftermath. Everything went so quickly that within a week it suddenly felt like, 'Yeah, this really looks like it's going to happen.' It was kind of surprising and startling."
After the Syrian government joined the Chemical Weapons Convention in September 2013 it had an obligation to disclose its chemical weapons programme and eliminate production facilities and the stockpile as soon as possible (the agreed deadline is June 30, 2014). The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), an intergovernmental body which promotes and verifies adherence to the convention, is overseeing the elimination in partnership with the UN. Its inspectors arrived in Damascus on October 1 last year.
The OPCW inspectors set up a base in Damascus, followed by a base in the Syrian port of Latakia from where the chemicals would be shipped. Then they began visiting the 23 sites disclosed by the Syrian government. By the end of October, all of Syria's declared chemical weapons production facilities had been rendered inoperable. (One was too dangerous for the inspectors to visit, but the OPCW was satisfied it had been shut down; another, near Aleppo, was considered too dangerous for the inspectors, but Syrians carried out an inspection carrying cameras and GPS trackers, which satisfied the OPCW.)
Once the production facilities were shut down, the OPCW's attention turned to the huge stockpile of chemical agents and precursors in Syria. Some of the material could be destroyed within the country, but it was decided that priority chemicals (the most dangerous agents, or precursors which could most easily be turned into agents) should be exported and processed outside of Syria.
Primarily these were mustard (an agent) and DF (methylphosphonyl difluoride, a precursor for sarin and other nerve agents).
The OPCW inspectors estimated that about 560 tonnes of mustard and DF (90 per cent of the total being DF) would need to be processed, which was exactly what the FDHS had been designed for.
All that was needed was somewhere to put the FDHS, ideally outside of Syria, but not too far away. Several nations offered assistance in other ways, but none of those approached agreed to host the FDHS (in Albania, citizens actually protested against it). So the Americans suggested a solution: put the FDHS on a ship. "I didn't appreciate the difficulty of that as much as I should have," says Baker.
The first problem was dimensional. The ship chosen to carry the FDHS was the Cape Ray, a 200-metre-long, roll-on-roll-off cargo ship with five decks. The FDHS was put on the third deck. The problem Baker and the ECBC faced was that the FDHS was designed to be compact when packed up for transporting, but it had been assumed that, once it was moved, it would be set up on land, where there would be plenty of space for satellite elements – storing the chemicals prior to processing, huge interim holding tanks and the command and control centre. There was no room to do this on the Cape Ray. "Now we have to work in three dimensions, because we can't fit everything that's required for the process on that one deck," Baker says. "We have tanks full of [liquid] on the decks above it. We have tanks that are going to receive effluent on the deck below it and the deck above it. We have our command and control centre on the deck above it. We have our housing all the way on the top deck.
It's a lot of things that are new to us; a lot of things we had to spend a lot of time adapting."
Simple things like fitting the environmental enclosure (a sealed tent) on the ship became a problem. The enclosure is where the FDHS is housed (there are two systems in the enclosure – after the prototype was completed a further six were commissioned, at a cost of $5 million each, and two were put on the Cape Ray). It's the most hazardous place on the ship. When processing begins, the drums of mustard and DF will be carried by forklift from the shipping containers to a bay within the enclosure. FDHS operators inside the enclosure will open the drums and use a hose to transfer the liquid into the reactor. The main risk is spillage, so anyone working in the enclosure will use supplied air and wear protective suits. The air is also ventilated and monitored. "The idea is to confine the contamination to this very small space," Baker says.
The problem was that the frame to which the enclosure's fitted plastic fabric was attached was too tall for the deck. To get it on the ship they had to chop the top off. But once the frame was shortened, the fabric wouldn't fit the frame securely. So the team had to create a new one.
Water was a problem too. The FDHS requires a supply of fresh water to mix with the mustard and DF, but the ship only had access to seawater. So the team put a reverse osmosis purification unit on board. The team also had no experience of working at sea – when they joined the Cape Ray in the Atlantic for five days of sea trials to run simulations, some suffered seasickness. ("It was a bit choppy for a couple of days," says Baker. "But I got used to it"). The motion of the waves also caused problems for the FDHS.
"They found structural concerns that we've been working on mitigating, like adding different support," Baker says. "The FDHS was built to be used on land, but now they have a tank that's full of thousands of litres of liquid, sloshing back and forth – that's a lot of new stresses." Those structural fixes (as well as others on the interim holding tanks) were carried out by a team of 11 ECBC personnel staying with the Cape Ray in Rota, a US naval base in Spain, while they waited for the start of the mission. The team of 11 will be joined by the rest of the FDHS operators (64 in total, all of whom have volunteered – including Baker, who will spend most of his time in the command and control centre managing the programme). They will be joined by a security team, civilian crew and US Navy personnel, making a total of 135 on the ship.
Personnel still currently based in the US are expecting to be given a week's notice before being flown out to the ship. At the time of writing, they are waiting for the Syrians to deliver all the mustard and DF to the port of Latakia. There have been delays.
That side of the mission works like this: the OPCW inspectors check the chemicals at the storage sites, the Syrians put the chemicals into drums supplied by the US, which are loaded on to armoured lorries supplied by Russia. The Syrians drive the trucks from the storage sites to Latakia (where ambulances and surveillance cameras are provided by China), and before the chemicals are shipped out the OPCW inspectors check that the chemicals which arrived match what left the storage sites (using chemical tests, seals, GPS and other electronic devices). "It's a giant accounting exercise," says Jerry Smith, deputy head of the OPCW mission. Originally from Cornwall, Smith had spent his career disposing of bombs for the British Army and clearing land mines in the private sector, before joining the OPCW in 2006.
Since October 2013 he's spent months in Syria on the OPCW mission and he has a simple explanation for the delays: "It's not an inconsiderable exercise to move hundreds of tonnes of this material across a country that has been at civil war for the last three years."
He points out that some storage sites are close to front lines which are "particularly violent at the moment" (he spoke to Wired in February), so collecting chemicals in the first place is difficult. Once the trucks set off (unaccompanied by OPCW inspectors) the roads are damaged and, Smith says, there are threats from improvised explosive devices and other types of attack. Airlifting the chemicals was considered, but it was decided that roads were safest and most practical.
Once the chemicals are delivered to Latakia, Danish ships will ferry them to an Italian port, where the Cape Ray will dock to collect the containers before sailing into international waters in the Mediterranean. The FDHS team will then run simulations, then begin processing for real. "From the time we get the material on the ship it's probably 60 to 90 days until everything is destroyed," Baker says. "Then we're going to drop the effluent in Germany and Finland [at facilities which have agreed to treat the chemical waste created by the FDHS].
When that happens is all dependent on when the first step happens, and how quickly and effectively Syria is able to move this stuff to the port."
On April 22, the OPCW announced that 89 per cent of the top-priority chemicals had arrived in Latakia. Baker says that once the mission has been completed, the team will attempt to decontaminate the FDHS. Any parts that can't be decontaminated will be scrapped, but he hopes to take most of it home, "For the next time something like this comes up."
Andrew Hankinson is a freelance writer. He wrote about Astute-class subs in 02.14
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
