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Ten weeks have passed since the Israel Air Force attacked in Syria, and there is still no reliable information about the precise target that was destroyed, or about the importance and necessity of the attack. Since Israel keeps maintaining its veil of secrecy, Everything that is known comes from leaks by anonymous U.S. administration officials to several of the major American media outlets. What is almost certain, judging from the leaks, are the following facts: A nuclear site built by the Syrians was attacked, and there was some connection to know-how and technology transferred from North Korea. The prevailing assumption is that it was a 5-megawatt nuclear reactor that was in stages of construction, that would have enabled Syria to produce plutonium to manufacture a nuclear bomb. This assumption relies first and foremost on an analysis by scholar David Albright, director of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington (ISIS). Albright was part of the United Nations supervisory unit in Iraq that searched for weapons of mass destruction. In recent years, he and his institute have gained a reputation as experts in nuclear proliferation. He is considered close to the U.S. intelligence communit and to have connections with the Israeli defense establishment. A month ago Albright, as well as The Washington Post and The New York Times, published satellite photos of the site attacked in Syria. The photos were taken on August 10, 2007 and reveal a structure built adjacent to a hilly slope, not far from the Euphrates River. Incidentally, it would be interesting to learn who knew already then, about a month before the attack to take photographs of the Syrian structure from the satellite company DigitalGlobe.A reactor without a dome
Albright compared the structure in Syria to satellite images of a structure located at the Yongbyon nuclear site in North Korea. The dimensions of the two structures are similar - about 48 by 32 meters and lacking a dome. The structure in North Korea is a nuclear research reactor built on the basis of a 1980 Chinese archetype. As opposed to the Western countries, in the Communist bloc countries, reactors commonly have a flat roof and lack a dome. For example, the reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, where the radioactive leakage disaster occurred in 1985, had no dome. The official production capacity of the reaction in Yongbyon, which was fueled with enriched uranium, is 5 megawatts, but the experts estimate that in fact its capacity had been extended. Over the years, particularly during the period when North Korea was not under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it produced plutonium from the nuclear fuel rods. U.S. intelligence estimates that even after the nuclear test conducted about a year ago (a test which failed), North Korea still has reserves of about 40 kilograms of plutonium, which is sufficient to produce 10 atom bombs. This plutonium is not under supervision, and North Korea could have concealed it in its laboratories or sold it to another country - Syria, for example. Albright's assessments, which hold that what was attacked in Syria was a nuclear reactor, have become almost an authoritative voice. They have been unreservedly adopted all over the world, Israeli media included. But Prof. Uzi Even of Tel Aviv University is challenging them here for the first time. On the basis of an analysis of the same satellite photos, which have been published in the media and on Web sites and are accessible to everyone, he believes that the structure that was attacked and destroyed was not a nuclear reactor. Even, a former Meretz MK, is a chemist who until 1968 worked at the nuclear reactor in Dimona (KAMAG - Hebrew for the Nuclear Research Center). For years he has been keeping track of, and writing about, Israel's nuclear policy and the proliferation of nuclear weapons worldwide.
By Yossi Melman
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As in the days of Noah....
