The concept of mobile, maritime system for location, assessment of technical condition, recovery and destruction of dumped chemical munitions

Abstract

After the World War II, acting under the terms of the Potsdam Agreement, the anti-Nazi coalition commenced destroying chemical and conventional munitions by dumping it in the seas (including in the Baltic Sea). As a result of these activities, tens of thousands of tons of ammunition were brought to the Baltic. The international project CHEMSEA has shown that dumped chemical munitions pose a threat to the environmental safety of the Baltic Sea, and that the need to collect and destroy munitions should be taken into account. The article describes the assumptions of a pilot system to identify chemical munitions in the Baltic Sea (including selected areas of the Polish Maritime Areas), assess its technical condition and the potential for its recovery. In addition, existing technical solutions (allowing for the use of the best available techniques – BAT) provide the opportunity to collect and neutralize sunken chemical munitions.

Keywords

• chemical munitions
• toxic warfare agents (BST)
• the Baltic Sea
• ecological threat