Perhaps trying to avoid an inspection altogether, Eshkol did not respond to the American requests and then bypassed the embassy altogether by dispatching a personal message to President Johnson — via a U. Eshkol cited concerns that a leak of the visit would undermine his political standing.
Also called a reprocessing plant, such a facility is intended to take irradiated, or spent, uranium rods from a reactor and extract plutonium from them via a series of highly toxic chemical operations. Shaping the U. Creation of such a facility, so the assumption went, would require a new top-level political decision. Once such a decision had been taken, roughly another two years would be needed to build the plant.
Thus, hypothetically, if Israel had started with such steps soon after the previous inspection, in January , a plant could have been operational by about January The only way to determine whether the Israelis had taken any steps toward reprocessing plutonium would be through onsite inspection. At the time of the January visit, however, the Israelis told the U. Given the concern that the Israelis could build a reprocessing plant in the absence of a U.
On or around December 6, Eshkol informed Barbour that he had set the weekend of January 30, , for the date of the next visit. The State Department instructed Barbour to press for a well-defined protocol for the January visit. Besides a minimum of two days onsite, the U.
Staebler, Floyd L. Culler and Charles McClelland. They received a briefing at the State Department on January 15, where they were told that their mission had both intelligence and diplomatic ramifications.
With the apprehension about a prospective Arab-Israeli arms race, evidence that Dimona was for peaceful purposes could be used to reassure Egyptian president Nasser. The visit to Dimona took place on Saturday, January 30, , a little more than a year after the preceding one. The scientific host of the team was the nuclear physicist Igal Talmi, who escorted the team during its entire three-day stay in Israel.
According to the U. During the 10 hours that the team spent at the Dimona complex, they were joined by the director, Manes Pratt, as well. The visit was conducted under significant restrictions, even more severe than those of a year earlier. Not only was the time at Dimona cut to just one day, but unlike in the previous year, the inspectors could not continue the visit into Saturday evening. The Israelis cut short the visit in the late afternoon, preventing the inspectors from seeing the inside of all the buildings on-site.
The fundamental findings were twofold and unanimous. First, the Dimona Nuclear Center was in a state of slowdown and uncertainty, if not in a real institutional crisis, as the Israeli government had recently suspended its earlier nuclear energy masterplan, pending certain decisions.
The context of the institutional slowdown, as explained to the American team, seemed to make sense. It appeared that this could get Israel both a nuclear power reactor and a desalinization plant at half price. Putting that new plan into effect would require the suspension of the original Israeli nuclear power masterplan, which was based on natural uranium fueled reactors. Recall, Dimona was presented to the American teams as an interim step toward that nuclear vision.
The BTWC mandates the elimination of existing biological weapons and prohibits developing, stockpiling, or using biological and toxin weapons. The Conference on Disarmament CD has 66 Member States and is the sole negotiating body for multilateral nuclear disarmament. Database Oct 20, Report Apr 5, Explore the Center. Close Israel Israel. A trench some meters yards runs near the dig. Some 2 kilometers 1. Tailings from the dig can be seen nearby. Similar concrete pads are often used to entomb nuclear waste.
Other images from Planet Labs suggest the dig near the reactor began in early and has progressed slowly since then.
Analysts who spoke to the AP offered several suggestions about what could be happening there. That raises both effectiveness and safety questions. In , Israeli soldiers even began handing out iodine pills in Dimona in case of a radioactive leak from the facility.
Iodine helps block the body from absorbing radiation. The lack of a secure second-strike capability would support the argument that Israel relies on a credible minimum deterrent. The Jericho program finds its roots in an early s agreement with French company Dassault to produce a surface-to-surface ballistic missile. Production was transferred to Israel after the Six-Day War in June , because France imposed an embargo on new military equipment.
There is considerable uncertainty around how many Jericho missiles Israel has in total and how many are nuclear capable. It is assumed that some of these missiles are nuclear-capable with estimates ranging from the likely 24 to the sensationalist figures of How Many? Weapons-grade fissile material stocks in the country are thought to have come from two sources.
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