It’s a crappily worded story. Apparently the intent is not to utterly destory all of the Van Allen belts, but merely to make passage through them safe by pushing them out of the way. It’s almost like describing an aerodynamic vehicle as removing the air from Earth.
Jacob Bortnick, who is quoted in this 2014 story, has continued study on this general topic. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020JA028018