The 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 Sèvres 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. <1> 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 weapon,<2> <3>, and terminated inspections that year.
More info at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negev_Nuclear_Research_CenterSatellite image of Israel's nuclear production facility.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=h&om=1&ll=31.002166,35.146959&spn=0.008902,0.019226&z=16------------------------------
Mordechai Vanunu (Hebrew: מרדכי ואנונו), born in Marrakech, Morocco on 14 October, 1954 is an Israeli former nuclear technician who revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986. He was subsequently lured to Italy and kidnapped by Israeli agents. He was transported to Israel and convicted of treason.
Mordechai Vanunu spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11 years in solitary confinement. Vanunu was released from prison in 2004, subject to a broad array of restrictions on his speech and movement. Since then he has been briefly arrested several times for violations of those restrictions, including giving various interviews to foreign journalists and attempting to leave Israel. He says he has been persecuted by the authorities in Israel because of his conversion to Christianity,<1> saying "I want to tell those who say I am a traitor, I suffered here 18 years because I am a Christian."<2>
In 2007 Vanunu was sentenced to six months in prison for violating terms of his parole. The sentence was considered unusual even by the prosecution who expected a suspended sentence. In response, Amnesty International issued a press release on 2 July, 2007, stating that "The organisation considers Mordechai Vanunu to be a prisoner of conscience and calls for his immediate and unconditional release."<3> Vanunu has been characterized by some as a whistleblower<4><5> and by others as a traitor.<6><7><8><9> He is considered by many Europeans as a 'hero of the nuclear age'<10>.
Many critics argue that Vanunu had no additional information that would pose a real security threat to Israel, and that the Israeli government's real motivation is a desire to avoid political embarrassment and financial complications for itself and allies such as the United States. By not acknowledging possession of nuclear weapons, Israel avoids a US legal prohibition on funding countries which proliferate weapons of mass destruction. Such an admission would prevent Israel from receiving, as it does now, more than $3 billion each year in military and other aid from Washington.<20>
Read more at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu
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