Posted on 12/02/2007 2:49:01 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Israelis hit Syrian ‘nuclear bomb plant’
Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv and Michael Sheridan in Seoul
ISRAEL’S top-secret air raid on Syria in September destroyed a bomb factory assembling warheads fuelled by North Korean plutonium, a leading Israeli nuclear expert has told The Sunday Times.
Professor Uzi Even of Tel Aviv University was one of the founders of the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona, the source of the Jewish state’s undeclared nuclear arsenal.
“I suspect that it was a plant for processing plutonium, namely, a factory for assembling the bomb,” he said. “I think the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] transferred to Syria weapons-grade plutonium in raw form, that is nuggets of easily transported metal in protective cans. I think the shaping and casting of the plutonium was supposed to be in Syria.”
All governments concerned - even the regime in Damascus - have tried to maintain complete secrecy about the raid.
They apparently fear that forcing a confrontation on the issue could spark a war between Israel and Syria, end the Middle East peace talks and wreck America’s extremely complex negotiations to disarm North Korea of its nuclear weapons.
The political stakes could hardly be higher. Plutonium is the element which fuelled the American atomic bomb that destroyed the Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
Critics in the United States say proof that North Korea supplied such nuclear weapons material to Syria, a state technically at war with Israel, would shatter congressional confidence in the Bush administration’s diplomatic policy.
From beneath the veil of military censorship, western commentators have formed a consensus that the target was a nuclear reactor under construction.
But Even said that purely from scientific observation, he had reached a different conclusion - that it was a nuclear bomb factory, posing a more immediate danger to Israel. He said that satellite photos of the site, taken before the Israeli strike on September 6, showed no sign of the cooling towers and chimneys characteristic of nuclear reactors.
Syria’s haste after the attack to bury the site under tons of soil suggested that hundreds of square yards were contaminated and there were fears of radiation, the professor added.
Since then the Syrians have sealed up the location, levelled the site and diverted curious journalists to a place that had not been attacked by Israel.
The professor’s theory fits with authoritative technical evidence about North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme. The North Koreans are able to produce weapons-grade plutonium, which is electro-refined, alloyed and cast into shapes ready to be machined to fit into a warhead, according to a team of distinguished American nuclear weapons scientists who visited the country’s laboratories.
One of those scientists, Siegfried Hecker, was allowed to hold a sample and was told that it was “good bomb grade plutonium”, because it had a very low content of plutonium240, the isotope which reduces the overall quality of the material.
Assembly of a Nagasaki-type bomb involves mating a plutonium core with a uranium wrap and inserting a small quantity of polonium and beryllium to initiate the chain reaction.
“Plutonium is highly dangerous material,” explained the Israeli professor. “It is easily oxidised in air unless protective measures are taken. The oxide is easily dispersed as dust in air when machining plutonium to create the ‘pit’ [a hollow sphere in many nuclear weapons] and thus can be inhaled, causing a fatality in minute quantities.
“Plutonium pellets are handled and machined exclusively in a large array of ‘glove boxes’, to protect the technicians and their environment. That is why you need a relatively large containment building and cannot assemble a nuclear weapon in your garage - unless you are suicidal of course.”
The debris from a destructive raid on a weapons-building facility could therefore contain toxic radioactive waste. But the main danger for Syria would be the telltale exposure of the elements to surveillance and detection by America. This would explain the cover-up at the site.
North Korea, for its part, has more than enough plutonium to sell some of its stock to Syria.
The same team of visiting US scientists estimated that by late 2006 the nation had made 40-50kg (88-100lb) of the material. Between six and eight kilograms are needed for a weapon.
For the US and its allies the Syrian connection raises the deeply worrying possibility that North Korea has succeeded in building what the US scientists called “a sophisticated design with smaller dimensions and mass so as to fit onto a . . . medium-range missile”.
That puzzle was complicated when North Korea announced that it had tested its first nuclear bomb on October 9 last year. The yield of the blast was small - less than a 20th of the Nagasaki bomb - suggesting to some scientists that the device was sophisticated and small while others believed the North Koreans had simply not made a very good bomb.
Professor Even believes the North Koreans have not yet perfected small warheads. “The mechanical dimensioning at this stage is extremely demanding (less than 0.01mm). So is the casting of the explosives around the plutonium core and the initiation of the implosion,” he said.
The question is under urgent study by nations who might one day be targets of a North Korean device sold to Syria or Iran. Iran is known to have financed missile and weapons deals between North Korea and Syria, causing concern to Israel and the US. One day after the Israeli attack, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, sent his nephew with a personal letter to Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian leader.
The professor’s theory of a clear and present danger that Damascus would get the bomb may be the only credible explanation why Israel carried out a military strike against Syria and risked an all-out conflict.
Indeed on September 6 Israel was ready for war with Syria. Israeli sources said its military chiefs assumed Syria would launch a retaliatory attack, but no reprisal came.
Meanwhile, President Bush has authorised his chief negotiator, Christopher Hill, to go on talking to North Korea in the search for a peaceful solution. Hill will visit Pyongyang this week to pursue negotiations after international technicians got to work on disabling the reactor at Yongbyon, the source of North Korea’s plutonium.
The North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il is supposed to make a full declaration of his nuclear programmes by December 31. The US says that must include information on his weapons deals with Syria and Iran.
Because as you and I know, this action of exporting plutonium from the DPRK to other nations (particularly to the Islamo fascist Middle East) in fact crosses the Bush Administration's so called RED LINE against North Korea in 2002-2003, when appeasement of North Korea was not US policy.
If they were to go over this "Red Line", it could well mean War with the United States.
4 to 5 years later, now, here in 2007, NOTHING WILL BE DONE. We kept shifting the Red Line and Kim Jong il knows it.
Also, this kind of FR thread on North Korea, of utmost importance, would stretch into the 300s and 400s with posted replies, were this situation were to be found out during a CLINTON ADMINISTRATION and everyone hushed it up as much as they have done here in this case, all in favor of Chamberlainian Peace Talks and a Peace Treaty.
A lot of people are really asleep at the switch on this one.
But we can't say anything about it. Neither can Syria or NK. We all continue to sip our tea, nervously.
N. Korea won’t meet these new conditions. Though we’ll see if they’re given more stalling time to ‘think about it’.
Let’s hope not.
....The real cause for the protracted conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors is cultural differences, not territory. That same reason is the cause of terrorism aimed at the United States lately. I do not believe that military power alone can bridge that gap between East and West. A deeper change is required, like the one achieved in Japan after World War II. Is America ready to do that? I wonder.
It’s just left me scratching my head. Only thing I can think is along the lines of there not being any atheists in foxholes :)
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
ping-pong.. Fascinating Vince Flynnesk.
Jerusalem has a Hotel named Notre Dame?? WOW!!
Indeed, Hitler also had ‘the planes operation’ re: NY.
Here are some relevant questions / comments.
1) Who will Ol' Ronery be giving his plutonium to NOW, given that Israel has taken out Syria's warhead production facilities?
2) Have the Israelis or the US conducted any covert sampling to determine (by isotope ratios and then process of elimination) the reactors from which the plutonium came?
3) Why hasn't the Bush administration sodomized Madeleine Albright and Bubba into oblivion over the demonstrated UTTER failure of their North Korea policy?
Cheers!
Hmmm.
And they can't have a transponder and flight plane because why?
What was that old sick DU-type joke about "Q. You have Hitler, Saddam Hussein, and Reagan standing in front of you, but you only have two bullets. What do you do? A. Shoot Reagan twice" ?
We could apply similar logic in that situation.
Or do the Arnaud-Armaury approach.
On a somewhat related topic, is there any way we could convince Hillary to start dating Ted Kennedy for a romantic moonlight swim drive?
Cheers!
Half the job is done. Teddy is drunk enough to date Hillary...
I don’t have specific knowledge of this, but several things I have seen indicate that we can identify the source of the nuclear material by way of isotope analysis of the residue of a nuclear explosion. Should we ever suffer such an attack, that source ought to glow in the dark for the next millenium - and we ought to be advertising that intention, far and wide.
9/6 ping
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