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Israel is massively expanding its nuclear facilities at Dimona, in the Negev desert, where it has historically manufactured fissile materials for its nuclear arsenal..
Construction work is shown in new satellite images released Thursday by the Independent Materials Commission Fissile (IPFM), Which is a group of independent experts. The area being worked on is located a few hundred meters south and west of the domed reactor and reprocessing point at the Shimon Peres Nuclear Research Center, near the desert city of Dimona..
Pavel Bodvig, a researcher in the Global Science and Security Program at Princeton University, said: “ It looks like construction started in early 2019 or late 2018, so it started about two years ago, but that’s all. we can tell right now.“.
The “Israeli” embassy in Washington did not comment on the new photos. “Israel” pursues a policy of deliberate ambiguity regarding its nuclear arsenal, without confirming or denying its existence. The Federation of American Scientists estimates that “Israel” has about 90 warheads made from plutonium produced in the heavy-water reactor at Dimona..
And “Israel” is reported to have used the nuclear facility to create replicas of Iranian uranium centrifuges to test the computer worm. Stuxnet Used to sabotage the Iranian uranium enrichment program in Natanz. But that was more than 10 years ago, long before the current expansion began..
“Israel” built the Dimona reactor in the 1950s with the secret help of the French government. At the end of the decade, an estimated 2,500 French citizens lived in Dimona, which had its own French secondary schools, but all under the guise of official denial..
According to The Samson OptionAccording to investigative journalist Seymour Hirsch, French workers were not allowed to write directly to their homes, their letters were sent through a fake mailbox in Latin America..
Dimona’s role in the “Israeli” nuclear weapons program was first revealed by a former technician there, Mordechai Vanunu, who told his story to the British Sunday Times in 1986..
Before publication, an “Israeli” agent lured him from Britain to Italy and kidnapped him by Mossad. Vanunu spent 18 years in prison, 11 of them in solitary confinement, for discovering Dimona’s secrets..
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Original address: Israel expands nuclear facility previously used for weapons material
Writer: Julian Borger
Source: The Guardian
Date: February 18, 2021
