Negev Nuclear Research Center

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Institute 2, Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), Dimona, photographed by Mordechai Vanunu

The Negev Nuclear Research Center is an Israeli nuclear installation located in the Negev desert, about ten kilometers to the south of the city of Dimona.

Its construction commenced in 1958, with French assistance according to the secret Protocol of Sèvres agreements. The complex was constructed in secret, and outside the International Atomic Energy Agency inspection regime. To maintain secrecy, French customs officials were told that the largest of the reactor components, such as the reactor tank, were part of a desalination plant bound for Latin America. [1] The purpose of Dimona is widely assumed to be the manufacturing of nuclear weapons, and the majority of defense experts have concluded that it does in fact do that. However, the Israeli government refuses to confirm or deny this publicly, as part of a policy of deliberate ambiguity.

The Dimona reactor went on-line some time between 1962 and 1964, and with the plutonium produced there, perhaps together with enriched uranium (see Plumbat Operation), the Israel Defence Forces most probably had their first nuclear weapons ready before the Six-Day War.

When the United States intelligence community discovered the purpose of Dimona in the early 1960s, it demanded that Israel agree to international inspections. Israel agreed, but on a condition that US, rather than International Atomic Energy Agency, inspectors were used, and that Israel would receive advance notice of all inspections.

Some claim that because Israel knew the schedule of the inspectors' visits, it was able to hide the alleged purpose of the site (manufacturing of nuclear weapons) from the inspectors, by installing temporary false walls and other devices before each inspection. The inspectors eventually informed the U.S. government that their inspections were useless, due to Israeli restrictions on what areas of the facility they could inspect. By 1969 the U.S. believed that Israel might have a nuclear weapon, [2] [3], and terminated inspections that year.

Vanunu's photograph of a Negev Nuclear Research Center glove box containing nuclear materials in a model bomb assembly, one of about 60 photographs he later gave to the British press.

The Dimona reactor was overflown by unidentified jet aircraft in the days before the Six Day War in 1967 which increased tensions and may have helped spur on the conflict. Recent documentation released by Russia suggests the jets may have in fact been Soviet in origin, and not Arab as previously thought ^[1].

In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at Dimona, revealed to the media some evidence of Israel's nuclear program. Israeli agents abducted him from Italy and transported him to Israel. An Israeli court then tried him in secret on charges of treason and espionage, and sentenced him to eighteen years imprisonment. At the time of Vanunu's arrest, The Times reported that Israel had material for approximately 20 hydrogen bombs and 200 fission bombs. In the spring of 2004, Vanunu was released from prison, and placed under several restrictions (such as the denial of a passport and restrictions on communications with the press). He was rearrested and charged in 2005 for violations of the terms of his release.

Dimona's reactor was defended by batteries of Patriot missiles in anticipation of strikes from Iraq in 2002 to 2003.

Recently safety concerns about this 40-year-old reactor have been reported. In 2004 as a preventive measure Israeli authorities distributed iodine anti-radiation tablets to thousands of residents living nearby. [4]

In 2006 a group of local residents was formed due to concerns regarding health and safety from living near the reactor.

[edit] See also

Israel and weapons of mass destruction
Osirak
Nuclear proliferation
Sajjad Askarpour
Muhammed Javad Askarpour

[edit] References

Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, University Press of Columbia (1999), ISBN 0-231-10483-9
Seymour M. Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, Random House (1991), hardcover, 354 pages, ISBN 0-394-57006-5