US allows stricter IAEA inspections, hopes others will follow

Negev Nuclear Research CenterJan 6th, 2009 - 18:42:49

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Coordinates: 31¡ã00¡ä09¡åN 35¡ã08¡ä54¡åE / 31.0026, 35.1484

Institute 2, Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), Dimona, photographed by Mordechai VanunuThe Negev Nuclear Research Center is an Israeli nuclear installation located in the Negev desert, about thirteen kilometers to the south-east of the city of Dimona.

Its construction commenced in 1958, with French assistance according to the secret Protocol of S¨¨vres 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. 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 weapons and terminated inspections that year.

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