Together with other contractors from both the United States and Russia, Thiokol Propulsion is involved in the safe and environmentally sound demilitarization and recycling of some 30,000 tons of ballistic missile fuel at sites in Arctic Russia.

The U.S. Defense Department is partially funding the disposal program to support Russia's compliance with the strategic arms reduction treaty (START). Highly toxic missile fuels, removed from both land-based and submarine-launched ICBMs, have caused concern because of limited and deteriorating storage facilities.

The program aims to eliminate a strategic and environmental threat while providing Russia with jobs and revenue from sale of the converted fuel.

Thiokol, no stranger to handling highly toxic and volatile liquids, is providing three disposal systems comprising transportable modules built in the United States and assembled at the Russian disposition sites-one system having been tested in Utah in June this year. All three have now been built and two of them assembled in Russia.

The systems use catalytic hydrogenation to convert the liquid fuel, unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine--UDMH to the chemically literate--into a valuable commodity chemical, dimethylamine. The product is then sold by one of Thiokol's Russian partners to users within the European chemical industry.

By Bob Rodwell