Recycling again - with and without emotion
On the military-technical information field for the caring inhabitant, the issue of ammunition disposal emerged as clear leaders. She left behind even the hot topic of European missile defense, which is understandable: missile defense for the overwhelming majority is speculative and abstract, and the explosions at arsenals and training grounds are here, outside the window!Disasters in arsenals, human casualties among specialists engaged in explosions, and a surge of protest speeches by the population, demanding to protect people from man-made earthquakes, created a wave of competent and informed speeches and publications that shed light on the situation and offer various ways to solve the problem. The situation seemed to be changing for the better, the government was about to adopt the “Industrial utilization of weapons and military equipment for the 2011 – 2015 years and for the period up to the 2020 year” program, designed to answer all questions. Finally, in November, the long-awaited 2011 program was approved - and nothing really changed. Although the benefit of the discussion was all the same: the military involved in the conversation had to reveal previously carefully stored numbers and plans. Neither of them pleased.
The Ministry of Defense continues to remain not only the main customer, but also the main executor of the works for disposal.
Called to reassure the public with optimistic reports that work is underway to transform arsenals into a “perfectly managed, predictable, holistic system for the storage and disposal of ammunition”, on the contrary, cause even more concern.
There are several reasons for concern, and they are all tightly interconnected.
The first is that all bravura statements confirm that it’s not the industry that “is responsible for the generation of these munitions, and should be disposed of them,” but the military themselves, are engaged in recycling.
Secondly, recycling continues to be carried out by the only available military method - open blasting, which poisons the ecology and makes the population of villages and towns constantly jump.
The third - behind the harmonious word "recycling" hide primitive destruction. That is, throwing good into a landfill with the difference that, in the role of a landfill, it is our air and land at the landfills.
MILITARY OFFICE OR INDUSTRY?
Proper disposal is a knowledge-intensive, technological, and environmentally minimally harmful process. Almost always for its implementation requires special production, control processes and technology. All this is absolutely not typical for the structure of the defense department.
Why did the Ministry of Defense privatize defense utilization work? There is one reason - the endowment of the military department with commercial functions. Someone came up with a "bright thought" - to instruct the Ministry of Defense "to support itself." So, in the end, the head of the department became a man who absolutely did not understand in military affairs, but he was completely well-versed in trade. In the “Arbat Military District”, “female” commercial domes quickly grew like mushrooms, and they began to sell land and objects, save on purchases of domestic weapons and at the same time throw a budget for the purchase of foreign weapons with a broad gesture.
It is clear that the transfer of all means for life support and the authority to spend them to the military ministry removed the headache of the government, but at the same time, on the other hand, this created a very dangerous state phenomenon in the state. Today, the Ministry of Defense has its own Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Trade, and even its industry - OJSC Rosoboronservis, established in accordance with the statutory documents "for profit" and "provision of services, including to foreign organizations."
The financial and material resources allocated to this “state”, its limits no longer leave, resolving through the “territory” of the military department. The Minister of Defense alone decides what and how to purchase, to whom to give contracts and what prices to set. And probably for the first time history the existence of a department on the direct orders of the head of government may respond: "I consider it inappropriate."
"Savings" on recycling "at the expense of domestic resources" - from the same series. At the same time, the privatization of the disposal of ammunition by their temporary user - the Ministry of Defense - causes direct damage to our defense industry, and the circulation of budgetary funds within the military department is rapidly undermining the very basis of the existence of specialized industrial enterprises. This was discussed by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.
The defense industry, by definition, exists to provide the defense needs of a country, not only in peacetime, but primarily in wartime. For this reason, enterprises are forced to maintain capacities that sometimes significantly exceed their current needs, the so-called mobilization reserve. Mobrezerv eats resources for maintenance, is taxed and a huge weight hangs on the cost of production, reducing its market competitiveness. " But these are our capacities that we keep for a rainy day. We are simply obliged to maintain these capacities, and the primitive market-based approach “buy where it is cheaper” is absolutely unacceptable here!
The Ministry of Defense behaves as if it exists in another country and the buildup of equipment and armaments during a threatened period or already during the war the French, Italians or Germans who have fallen into unexpected military-commercial mercy will provide the country. We are already witnessing ever more vivid manifestations of this - “Mistrali”, “Iveco”, German helmets, which are inferior to ours in protection, but with such a pleasant plastic chin strip!
Military enterprises exist for the production of products, that is, to begin the life cycle, and disposal. If military property warehouses are overstocked and production needs to be reduced, it means that a specific manufacturer still needs to be provided with work on the disposal of weapons and military equipment. Otherwise, the company will end. Taking the utilization away from defense enterprises, the Ministry of Defense takes away their means for existence and development in the interests of our country.
While the military was destroying the ammunition, the largest Avangard plant in the country was killed in Sterlitamak without work, calculated, among other things, for the disposal of 120 thousand shells per month. Our state has invested a lot of money in its modernization. By the December decree, the government identified him as the sole performer for the disposal of projectiles (although, probably, only in our country there can be seven "only" performers), and again they offer him whole 140 thousand shells for 2012 a year, that is, loading only for 35 work days . At the same time, the Ministry of Defense plans to explode almost one and a half million tons of ammunition. In fact, one state structure, the Ministry of Defense, ruins another state structure - a state-owned enterprise. This is commerce, turning into sabotage. What is more profitable for the state: so that the military allegedly saved on disposal or to keep the defense plant?
In the heat of controversy, another nuance of military disposal was left aside. One of the main achievements of the transformations in the Armed Forces is the transfer of auxiliary functions to contractors, reducing personnel to the minimum necessary to perform defense tasks. Say, the military will now focus only on combat readiness and combat training, which will provide an opportunity to raise the level and reduce the number. Now, it’s not the soldiers who are engaged in cleaning the territory in the military units, but the contractors, they also feed, water, dress and shoe the personnel. Perfectly! But why the whole division has been busy for a whole year not working out the fighting, but blowing up ammunition, taking bread from civilian specialists? The figures were voiced by Deputy Defense Minister General of the Army Dmitry Bulgakov: in 2012, 13 200 military personnel and 3200 units of equipment will take part in explosions.
EXPLODE AND DO NOT BREATHE
If the question of who should be disposed of can also with a stretch be called a reason for discussion, then there is no doubt about the harmful effects of the open detonation of ammunition on the environment.
In my younger years, I myself indirectly had a hand in undermining our missiles at Kapustin Yar. The spectacle is amazing, especially on an overcast winter day: an explosion of a bundle of eight “Pioneers” pierced a huge hole in heavy low clouds, and it was possible to bask for an hour under the rays of the bright sun. On this, however, all the charms ended.
I am not an ecologist, so I will rely on the work of four doctors of science, academics, laureates of state awards: “During the five months of 1988 of the year (August – December) at the Kapustin Yar range, it was destroyed by the method of undermining the 29 of the RSD-10 missiles. According to experts, during the explosion, about 918 tons of toxic substances were emitted into the atmosphere. Studies of the state of the environment during the explosion of the missiles were carried out by the Institute of Biophysics of the Ministry of Health of the USSR and NPO Typhoon of the USSR State Hydrometeorological Committee. Tests carried out at NPO Altai showed that the performance of composite solid-fuel rocket fuels (CPTT) for ejection during blasting on the surface is 0,07 cubic meters. m / kg, in TNT - to 0,04 cube. m / kg In other words, when a munition is blown up, a huge cloud of dust, saturated with poison, rises into the air.
In 1991, according to research results, the Interdepartmental Coordinating Scientific Council decided to consider ecologically-hygienic destruction of an SRTT using an explosive method unacceptable, and since then the disposal of strategic missiles has been almost the only utilization fragment completely transferred by the military industry and conducted under strict environmental control and ecologically the least harmful methods. Ten years ago, the Research Institute of Polymer Materials (Perm), which operates the SRTT utilization facility, three times sued the "green" ones that had become active - and successfully won all the processes. In this regard, my direct question to Mrs. Golikova and Mr. Onishchenko: what, the contents of smaller-scale munitions, which in the past two years have been bombarded as much as in previous 19 years, turned out to be absolutely harmless for the environment and with almost negligible performance to release?
Is the environmental monitoring of utilization undermining by the military today (observation material was only in the past year, the whole 1 341 200 t)? And if it is carried out, doesn’t it give grounds to conclude that it is necessary to “consider it unacceptable in ecological and hygienic terms” to destroy the ammunition using an open explosion method in general and make it obligatory to use only environmentally acceptable industrial methods?
The mentioned study of 20-year-old, by the way, did not affect in any way another aspect of explosions, which today is the main source of military conflict with the population, the acoustic impact. Meanwhile, according to scientists, it has no less, if not more influence on people. A few years ago, I was at a presentation in Utah testing the detonation of large-scale rocket fuel charges in various configurations. Then I was just struck by what gigantic efforts were spent on achieving the minimum level of the acoustic wave. The reason is simple - according to American law, the level of acoustic impact of the landfill on the nearest settlement is strictly regulated and controlled. And we do not have the relevant laws? Or we have no one to control their implementation?
At a military training ground near St. Petersburg, sappers prepare ammunition for disposal by the method of detonation. MONEY FOR WIND
Used in discussions today, the term "recycling" is a fig leaf that shamefully covers up an unattractive fact: ammunition with residual value potential does not simply turn into nothing without any benefit, they are released into the atmosphere as a toxic mixture. Huge funds are spent on this process. Yes, and initiating funds are also worth something. Add to this the cost of reclamation of landfill lands, according to some data, the component is more than 2 million rubles. for 1 ha. These are simply deferred expenses. Today, we will make a guess, but we will report it, and in ten years we will carry out with a pomp a campaign to restore these lands. Approximately the same as with the flooding of nuclear submarine reactors in the Kara Sea. Yesterday we were flooded, but today we are puzzled how to lift to clear the sea of half-life products.
The damage to the environment from open explosions at the landfills does not lend itself to financial expression at all - it is exorbitant. Meanwhile, everything that flies up into the air and turns the soil into a poisoned mass at landfills is a valuable raw material. The typical figures of the return potential are fixed in black and white in the recycling program as one of the main tasks of its implementation: “... to involve more than 3,5 million tons of ferrous metals into the economic turnover, about 520 thousand tons of non-ferrous, 35 tons of precious metals, 114 thousand tons of explosives and powders.
I want to ask, with the help of some kind of black, white or maybe green magic, will the Ministry of Defense return these prescribed and expected metals and gunpowder to physical condition after they blow up the air?
And to complete the picture: according to General Bulgakov, in 2011 – 2013 years, it was undermined or planned to undermine 4,8 million tons of ammunition. Experts say that in terms of weight, explosives and metals in their composition are distributed approximately 50 to 50. Accordingly, about two years 2,4 million tons of metal will be scattered on the blast fields and adjacent areas. At the cost of a ton of mixed scrap metal about 5 thousand rubles. the volume of losses will be 12 billion rubles. This is equal to the amount of funding from the federal budget for the entire recycling program for three years. Why, for all the glaring obviousness of mismanagement and harm, nothing changes?
The military, as a spell, repeats, in their opinion, an iron argument: the allegedly capabilities of the industry make it possible to utilize the necessary amount of 6,5 mln. Tons only for 20 years, which, in their opinion, is an unacceptably long period. It is necessary to immediately reduce the number of stored ammunition to 3 million tons, which will ensure their “100 percent fire and explosion safety”. Therefore, it is necessary to blow everything up beyond the specified number at an accelerated pace, and to report back to 1 in January and 2015 of the year to wake up with a “streamlined logistic centers system.
All this argument is good only for those who invented it, and built with serious overexposure.
Firstly, General Bulgakov, who voiced it, in his arithmetic calculations took into account only the utilization possibilities of industry that exist today. If there is scope of work and guarantees that the won tender will not be taken away by the military in violation of all laws (as it happened earlier), enterprises will easily increase their capacity based on the most advanced technologies, give them only a stable perspective. Accordingly, it will no longer be about 20's, but about a more acceptable length of time.
Secondly, the general spoke about the low utilization productivity when using the most extensive method - through disassembly. But it is not a secret to anyone that they are widely used throughout the world for recycling and controlled detonation with the purification of the resulting gases and with the collection of fragments. It provides recycling much faster, without an environmental catastrophe, without unreasonable acoustic effects and with the collection of recyclable metal.
Third, suppose an avalanche-like elimination solves the problem of excess ammunition before 1 in January of 2015. But even those that remain in the “superreprenals of the future” will once earn time and go into the category of recyclable ones. What to do with them?
Fourth, with less ammunition and more organized storage, the risk of explosions is reduced. But it will never be zero. "100% fire and explosion safety" is a utopia. To justify the explosives race with this false goal is to deliberately mislead the public and the country's leadership.
Fifthly, who said that 20 years is prohibitively long and that the problem of storing excess ammunition must be solved by all means by January 1 and 2015? To reduce the risk, it is necessary to transfer the storage sites of the ammunition to be disposed of to the Ministry of Industry or the newly created Directorate in the image of the structure involved in the destruction of chemical weapons. Then the Ministry of Defense will immediately eliminate all problems. The industry received ammunition will disperse on arsenals and landfills for longer storage and there they will disassemble or also undermine, but by civilized, environmentally less harmful and scientifically calculated methods. Then “Oboronservis” will not be in monopoly feeding in violation of the law on public procurement, and will be on a par with other enterprises for profit.
RUSSIAN QUESTION: WHAT TO DO?
With the almost complete absence of demand for real industrial disposal of ammunition from the main customer - the Ministry of Defense - the profile science and technology in our country is alive and continues to develop. It is regrettable that parallel processes continue in the country. On the one hand, the military department blows up at the landfills “everything that is badly lying”, on the other hand, thinking people in the state apparatus continue to put money into the state defense order for the development of recycling technologies.
And enterprises that are interrupted by fasting rations continue to allocate money from very scanty profits to develop their own technologies “for the future”. It is thanks to the care of the latter that the Ministry of Industry and Trade has turned into the “Catalog of technological equipment for ammunition recycling” issued for the narrow circle. The 80 technologies and products presented in it cover the entire recycling cycle.
In general, our developers and manufacturers of recycling equipment turned out to be practically cornered. The lack of demand for equipment makes it impossible to sell it on the domestic market, and the external market is almost closed. In order to simply disseminate information about the most primitive product, it is necessary to obtain an equal number of papers with its approval by weight. If the foreign buyer shows interest, the process of pricing, signing the contract and delivery will turn into completely different, “securely licensed” hands, and then the process will either stall or the enterprise will get only a penny.
According to some reports, Deputy Prime Minister Rogozin, exploiting his recent NATO contacts, initiated in March the start of a corresponding dialogue in Brussels, during which more than 20 Russian technologies were successfully introduced to Western partners.
What can be done to ensure that industrial disposal of ammunition is in demand? It would be incorrect and uncharacteristic for a Russian person not to try to answer this question.
In October last year, at a specialized conference, experts unanimously noted that the problems in the field of recycling in our country today have changed significantly. In the initial stages, the problems were insufficient funding. With the advent of financing, the problem of personnel has become acute, they decided it too. The main problem remained - organizational. In the Ministry of Defense, despite the abundance of those who want to steer contracts, in reality, the issues of disposal are handled by a very limited group of mostly unimportant, almost random people.
In fact, there is no real owner. Meanwhile, it is only necessary to create a directorate of the federal program. All the legal framework required for this has existed for a long time, several federal program directorates have been successfully operating in the country. There are no problems with personnel either — there are people in the government itself who have been trying, with varying success, for several years to put the state’s interests above someone’s departmental ambitions.
The creation of such a directorate, subordinate to the government, in one movement would put everything in its place and make it possible to do each of its work: the Ministry of Defense - to defend the Motherland, the industry - to bring cartridges and dispose of unused ones. Of course, in addition to creating a recycling program directorate, much more can and must be done.
For ease of understanding, the necessary actions can be presented at the traditional three levels.
At the tactical level in the near future:
- a government order to prohibit the disposal of ammunition by the method of open blasting, with the exception of defective ones that require destruction in this way;
- to transfer the issues of disposal of ammunition and military equipment from the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense of the established Directorate - with specific instructions on the mandatory use of only environmentally friendly methods;
- use the tested site of the Interpolitex exhibition for the gradual expansion of the volume of the annual international conference on disposal in order to accumulate information on relevant issues, taking it under the patronage of the government apparatus.
At the operational level in the medium term:
- to create a system of combined arsenals of the Defense Ministry and utilization enterprises of the Directorate and the Ministry of Industry for ensuring a unified system of the military property life cycle (for example, the arsenal of the Strategic Missile Forces Pibanshur, on which the disposal facility is located, is operated by a joint-stock company).
- to provide comprehensive support for the exchange of scientific and technical information on recycling technologies both domestically and with the involvement of foreign resources, for which purpose state agencies and corporations involved in working with ammunition are required to support this exchange at financial and organizational levels in order to select the most advanced technologies;
- create a self-sustaining system of economic incentives for recycling using technologies that maximize the reuse of components;
- remove all structures created for commercial activities - Rosoboronkontrakt, Rosoboronpostavka, the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, the pricing policy department and other organizations - from the Defense Ministry and transfer them directly to the government apparatus.
At the strategic level in the long term:
- to create on the basis of the military-industrial complex a full-time structure headed by a deputy prime minister who will unite non-core organizations that have been withdrawn from the Defense Ministry, will act as a government contractor for all defense contracts and have real policy power both with respect to users of military property and its utilization producers - Roskosmos, Rosatom, Ministry of Industry and Trade, state corporations. This will make it possible to concentrate the pricing policy in one hand and put an end to the endless war of the Ministry of Defense with industry.
- Adopt a law on mandatory primary purchase of national products for the needs of the defense and the state apparatus. The decision on the second part regarding the vehicles has already been made by the government - it is necessary to expand it and raise it to the level of federal law;
- to make changes to the Tax Code that provide for exemption from taxation of mobilization capacities and the implementation of contracts for defense and state needs, this will avoid unnecessary deduction from the useful turnover of up to 25% of the funds allegedly spent today on these goals, and in fact are moving senselessly on idle in a vicious circle "budget - enterprise - tax service - budget" and losing weight due to sticking to the "walls of pipes", pumping the money banks.
Thus, you can do a lot without capital expenditures and with tangible returns. It is only necessary to really strive for the best, objectively look at the state of affairs, not be afraid to pull the situation into the light, discuss and correct or even throw out all that is harmful, useless, hangs with ballast and does not work for the benefit of the whole country.
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