Word: reactors
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...raid, Begin had been a fount of information-and astonishing misinformation. Even the chief of MOSSAD, Israel's intelligence agency, felt constrained to lament the "devil's dance of public statements and counterstatements." Begin incorrectly said that there was a secret chamber for making bombs beneath the reactor, falsely quoted a Baghdad newspaper to the effect that the reactor was to be used "against the Zionist enemy," and claimed that the reactor would soon become operational, a view contradicted even by some senior Israeli military officials...
American officials were not alone last week in expressing doubts that Iraq could have produced materials for nuclear weapons within months of activating the 70-MW Tammuz reactor. That crucial Israeli contention did get some support, but also a lot more detailed criticism, from an impressive array of international nuclear scientists and Western government officials...
...chicanery was disputed in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Roger Richter, an American married to an Israeli, who resigned last week as an inspector for the international agency. Richter, who had been assigned to cover the area including Iraq but had never personally inspected the Tammuz reactor, said that the Iraqis could have concealed bombmaking efforts during IAEA inspection visits. Richter also said he believed the Iraqis wanted to make bombs within five years...
Richter's statement contradicted Eklund, but failed to explain how the Iraqis could fool the French technicians constantly on the scene. Last week the French government disclosed a secret agreement with Iraq for keeping French personnel at the reactor site until 1989. Michel Pecqueur, head of the French Atomic Energy Commission, insisted that the continued French presence would make it "impossible" for Iraq to stockpile the material to manufacture atomic weapons. If the Iraqis did try to cheat, he said, France would have cut off further supplies of enriched uranium. Pecqueur granted that a "significant quantity" of plutonium could...
Technically, there is little doubt among experts that the Tammuz reactor, with modifications, could have produced bomb-grade plutonium. But the burden of proof that Iraq planned to do so still rested squarely on the Israelis...