Israel's Nuclear Time-Bomb, Vanunu Humanrights #LetsTalkNukes

SHARE ...

Israel’s nuclear time-bomb exposed in ultrasound examination of Dimona reactor: 1,537 defects seen in the aluminum core

By Eileen Fleming

In April a Scientific forum in Tel Aviv released the ultrasound examination of Israel’s Nuclear reactor which revealed 1,537 defects in the aluminum core of the Dimona.

On Tuesday, Israel’s Haaretz reported:

Fears for the condition of the [Dimona] reactor were palpable at the conference…

Israel received its nuclear reactor from France at the end of the 1950s and it was put into operation for the first time at the end of 1963.

Such reactors are intended to be operational for about 40 years, to ensure they remain in one piece.
The main problem with aging reactors is that the core is irreplaceable.

For political, scientific and economic reasons, Israel has no capability or desire to replace the core, an operation that would mean building a new reactor.

Israel is not a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, thus monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have never been allowed access to the Dimona WMD Facility.

In 2015, The US-based Institute for Science and International Security estimated Israel had 115 nuclear warheads.

On April 21, the headline in Haaretz read:

Declassified: How Israel misled the U.S. about its nuclear program

Fifty U.S. documents from the early 1960s were declassified by the U.S. National Security Archive on Thursday, shedding light on Israel’s attempts to hide one of its best-kept secrets to this day: details on its nuclear program.

The Americans ultimately believed the Israelis were providing ‘untruthful cover’ about intentions to build a bomb.

The documents include papers from the White House, the State Department, the Atomic Energy Commission and U.S. intelligence agencies.

One document provides the minutes of a ‘nuclear conference’ between U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion on May 30, 1961, at the Waldorf Astoria in New York.

According to previously published details about that meeting, Ben-Gurion told Kennedy that Israel’s ‘main – and for the time being only – purpose is [cheap energy]. We do not know what will happen in the future.’

In the newly released minutes, we learn that Ben-Gurion mumbled, spoke softly, was hard to hear and understand.
The newly declassified minutes also reveal that Assistant Secretary of State Phillips Talbot, thought he heard Ben-Gurion mention a “pilot plant for plutonium separation, which is needed for atomic power” and this might happen “three or four years later.”

Ten days before that meeting the first American inspectors arrived at the Dimona reactor.

The inspectors believed the facility was consistent with the Israelis’ description: a research reactor for peaceful purposes.

Although people at Dimona told the Americans that the reactor’s output would probably be doubled in the near future, they returned home satisfied, and their positive report paved the way for the Kennedy-Ben-Gurion meeting.

A CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate on Israel from October 1961, reveal that Washington believed the Dimona reactor’s purpose was to create an infrastructure for nuclear weapons.

The U.S. National Security Archive’s website contains many U.S. documents regarding Israel’s nuclear program.

In April 2015, a headline at TheArabDailyNews read:

U.S. DOCUMENTS CORROBORATE MORDECHAI VANUNU RE: ISRAELI WMD:

The National Security Archive of George Washington University published documents corroborating much of what Israel’s Nuclear Whistle Blower Mordechai Vanunu has been saying for thirty years.

The documents detailed the discovery of Israel’s nuclear deceptions, debates over Israel’s lack of candor and efforts to pressure the Israelis to answer key questions about the Dimona during the Eisenhower years.

‘Funny’ that on 21 April in Tel Aviv, scientific evidence of Israel’s dinosaur called Dimona is made public; but from Jerusalem only silence over Israel’s Supreme Court’s failure to rule on or before April 21, on nuclear whistle blower Mordechai Vanunu’s 8^th appeal to end all human rights restrictions against him.

To this day Vanunu is still waiting for his right to leave Israel and American media and politicians ignore this elephant in the world: Israel’s Nuclear Apartheid.

‘Funny’ how I met Vanunu in east Jerusalem in 2005 and became a reporter just because he told me:

The French were responsible for the actual building of the Dimona.

The Germans gave the money; they were feeling guilty for the Holocaust, and tried to pay their way out.

Everything inside was written in French, when I was there, almost twenty years ago. Back then, the Dimona descended seven floors underground.

In 1955, Perez and Guirion met with the French to agree they would get a nuclear reactor if they fought against Egypt to control the Sinai and Suez Canal.

That was the war of 1956. Eisenhower demanded that Israel leave the Sinai, but the reactor plant deal continued on.
Did you know that President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons?

In 1963, he forced Prime Minister Ben Guirion to admit the Dimona was not a textile plant, as the sign outside proclaimed, but a nuclear plant.

The Prime Minister said, ‘The nuclear reactor is only for peace.’

Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. He wrote letters demanding that Ben Guirion open up the Dimona for inspection.

When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect.

Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways.

From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.

Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year.