Thursday, November 22, 2007
A Tel Aviv University professor, Uzi Even, is speculating that what the Israelis bombed in Syria was not, in fact could not have been, a nuclear reactor. What it may have in fact been was a facility for taking already produced plutonium -- from North Korea in this case -- and doing final production of a bomb. The theory is an interesting, and disturbing, one -- not only the bomb, but the speculation that once again, the State Department and other government entities are keeping the truth under wraps so that negotiations (in this case the Six Party Talks with North Korea) aren't jeopardized.
Haaretz: Inside Intel / Not a reactor - something far more vicious
...Even's questions relate to several substantive issues. First, in the reactor in Yongbyon, one can clearly see a chimney, which is necessary for the emission of the radioactive gases (incidentally, based on the emission of the gases experts can determine the capacity of the reactor). In the satellite photos of the structure in Syria there is no chimney. It could be claimed that the Syrians may not have had time to build it. This is a reasonable answer, but it is overshadowed by the fact that there is evidence that the structure was under construction already four years ago. There are satellite photos of the site from 2003. In these photos one can clearly see in one of the building walls openings, which disappeared in the 2007 photos. "We can assume that construction began even before 2003," says Even. "In all those years, five years or even more, a chimney had still not been built? Very strange."
No less strange in his opinion is the fact that the "reactor" did not have cooling towers. The pumping station seen in the photos, 5 kilometers from the site, cannot, according to him, be a substitute for such towers. "A structure without cooling towers cannot be a reactor," he says, pointing to the satellite photo from Yongbyon, in which one can clearly see the cooling tower, with steam rising from it...
..."In my estimation this was something very nasty and vicious, and even more dangerous than a reactor," says Even. "I have no information, only an assessment, but I suspect that it was a plant for processing plutonium, namely a factory for assembling the bomb."
In other words, Syria already had several kilograms of plutonium, and it was involved in building a bomb factory (the assembling of one bomb requires about four kilograms of fissionable material).
Processing the plutonium and assembling the bomb require utmost caution, because plutonium is one of the most toxic and radioactive materials. One microgram can kill one person, and a gram is capable of killing a million people. Handling it requires special lathes, but because of its lethal nature nobody is allowed to come into direct contact with plutonium or with the lathes. That is why there is a need to build labs containing dozens of glove boxes, which isolate and separate the worker from the material and the equipment.
What reinforces Even's suspicion that the structure attacked in Syria was in fact a bomb assembly plant is the fact that the satellite photos taken after the bombing clearly show that the Syrians made an effort to bury the entire site under piles of earth. "They did so because of the lethal nature of the material that was in the structure, and that can be plutonium," he said. That may also be the reason they refused to allow IAEA inspectors to visit the site and take samples of the earth, which would give away their secret...
My guess was that the Syrians had gotten a hold of some of the notorious P-1 centrifuges, either from North Korea, or supplied directly by the A.Q. Khan ring. There is considerable speculation to that effect on the internet. It is unlikely that the Syrians had advanced far enough to build an atom bomb. If they had, the Israeli's would have attacked more than one facility, one for producing fissionable materials, and the other for building bombs.