The "site number 1282", the official codename for the Gorny facility, is right next to a village of the same name in the brown, windswept steppe some 190 kilometers (120 miles) north-east of Saratov on the Volga.

Open since December, it still sports freshly painted buildings and silvery tubes as well as armed patrols and guard dogs -- not to mention impressive safeguards complete with mounds of barbed wire, various electronic devices, watchtowers and two gunmen at the door.

"No pictures or video filming," a security officer says coldly before granting admission to the site, the only factory in Russia working full-time on destroying chemical weapons, where any visitor must come equipped with a gas mask on a sling.

The enterprise's nerve center is a tiny, immaculately clean room where a dozen technicians, eyes riveted on their computers, keep a silent watch on the proceedings, occasionally piping up with a dry instruction or two.

Two rows of numerous television screens show the factory's important sites, none of which betray any human presence save at one post, where two white-robed, gas-masked technicians exchange small gestures.

"They are watching over the last charge, whose elimination is almost done," explains laconically Alexander Pavlov, the shift chief.

In this case, the substance on its way to destruction is 760 kilograms (1,680 pounds) of yperite, the "mustard gas" whose invention dates all the way back to the First World War.

The tubes containing the poison gas are covered by a special paint whose color changes to detect leaks, and equipped to maintain a constant temperature.

As humans are the weakest link in this chain of destruction, the human role is reduced to the barest minimum, the operation automated wherever possible.

Nevertheless, the intensity of the task allows only four-hour shifts for those working in the destruction room.

The operators never come into contact with poisonous materials, which is just as well as their costumes would allow them only 15 minutes of protection in case of accident.

The poison is destroyed by slow heating of some 100 degrees Celsiusdegrees Fahrenheit), leaving it only a puddle of toxic chemical soup that would be no longer lethal.

Gorny is strategically placed next to one of Russia's seven storages for chemical weapons, "to avoid transporting toxic substances" and drawing terrorist attention, the factory's operations manager Alexander Smetanin said.

Gorny holds only 2.9 percent of Russia's chemical stock, stored in long gray hangars next to the factory.

No access is allowed to the khaki-painted barrels that originally contained 1,160 tonnes of yperite and lewisite, due to be eliminated by 2005.

Zhenya, a pretty 24-year-old woman, said she was "proud to work in Gorny," where her administrative post earned her "a good salary of 6,500 rublesdollars)."

She voiced her pleasure with her brand-new lodgings, complete with a school and a hospital for hundreds of employees who flocked to this village of some 8,000 inhabitants.

The region's governor came last weekend to congratulate the factory's team with the completion of the first stage, noting that "it is obviously far more dangerous to keep chemical arms than to destroy them."

SPACE.WIRE