Ukraine to destroy toxic nuclear missile fuel

Ukraine will forge ahead next year with the decommissioning of a critical part of its nuclear arsenal despite being denied promised financial aid from the United States, Russian ITAR-TASS news agency quoted a senior Ukrainian official as saying on Wednesday.
"Ukraine has decided to carry out the programme on its own," said Evhen Ustimenko, head of the chemical plant in Pavlohrad, eastern Ukraine, where the material is being stored.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine found itself in possession of the world's third largest nuclear arsenal. It had inherited 176 launchers of intercontinental ballistic missiles - 130 SS-19s and 46 SS-24s - carrying a total of nearly 1,300 warheads.
When it became independent from Moscow, Kiev proclaimed itself nuclear-free and began liquidating its nuclear arsenal. This included destroying 5,000 tonnes of toxic propeller fuel destined for its SS-24 intercontinental ballistic missile launchers.
In 2000, the US Congress approved plans to spend 24 million dollars (20 million euros) on building a plant in Ukraine to liquidate the fuel. The plant was to be built in 2003-04 and the destruction of the fuel, currently being stored in Pavlhograd, was to be completed in late 2007.
But the administration of US President George W. Bush suspended funding for the project in 2003, saying it wanted the scheme made cheaper and safer for the environment.
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma issued a decree recently stipulating that Ustimenko's plant would resume work to destroy the fuel next year and that the job was to be completed in 2011.
Ustimenko said on Wednesday his facilities might also be given the task of retreating fuel from 20,000 other non-nuclear missiles currently being stockpiled in military depots across Ukraine.
The missiles are not necessarily destined to be destroyed. But the fuel is an instable chemical product that is both corrosive and toxic and cannot be left in the missile fuel tanks indefinitely.
Separately, the Ukrainian army is due on Thursday to start destroying 95,000 weapons stockpiled in a huge depot near Melitopol, in the south-east of the country, an operation that is due to take two to three weeks, Interfax news agency quoted regional official Volodymyr Yanko as saying.
A fire triggered a string of devastating explosions of munitions at the depot in May, killing five people and forcing the evacuation of thousands of local inhabitants.
The site was housing the equivalent of 4,500 wagonloads of munitions, much of them inherited from the Soviet Union.