Satellite images show construction work on a major new facility at the nuclear site near Dimona, Israel, the location of Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program, The Associated Press reported on Wednesday.
Israel is believed to have somewhere between 90 and 300 nuclear warheads, but the real figure is unknown since both Israel and the US do not officially acknowledge that the nuclear stockpiles exist. Israel is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and its secret weapons program is not subject to any international inspections.
The ambiguity around Israel’s nuclear weapons program allows the US to provide military assistance without worrying about the Symington Amendment, a foreign assistance law that prohibits aid to countries that traffic in nuclear enrichment equipment or technology outside of international safeguards.
The Dimona nuclear site in the Negev Desert, known formally as the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center, has had a heavy water reactor operating there since the 1960s. “That heavy water reactor, experts say, provides Israel with the plutonium for its nuclear weapons as well as the isotope tritium. That isotope is used to boost and also miniaturize nuclear weapons down to fit onto missile warheads,” said AP reporter Jon Gambrell in a video report.
Gambrell said that experts and AP’s own analysis of the satellite images “show that this project could be any number of things, including, what experts say, could be a new heavy water reactor that could allow Israel to potentially build more nuclear weapons or potentially service the ones they already have.”
The report said that the heavy water reactor at Dimona has been operating far longer than similar reactors from the same era, suggesting it may need to be replaced or retrofitted soon.
Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, told AP that if it is a new heavy water reactor, then Israel is “seeking to maintain the capability to produce spent fuel that they then can process to separate plutonium for more nuclear weapons, or they are building a facility to maintain their arsenal or build additional warheads.”
The report comes a few months after Israel and the US launched a war on Iran under the pretext that Tehran may be moving toward developing a nuclear weapon, a claim that lacked evidence. Amid the scrutiny of its civilian nuclear program, Iran has frequently pointed to the fact that Israel does actually have a secret nuclear weapons program, and that Israel is not an NPT signatory.
