Reactor Sustaining Israeli Weapons Needs Overhaul, Expert Says
- Dimona supply of key tritium isotope appears to be depleted
- Without tritium, ‘weapons become duds,’ Robert Kelley says
The Dimona nuclear power plant in Israel on March 8, 2014.
Photographer: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images
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Israel needs to overhaul or replace the 55-year-old nuclear reactor that’s believed to supply a key material for the nation’s unacknowledged atomic weapons stockpile, according to a former director of inspections for the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The 26-megawatt Dimona reactor is where Israel gets its supplies of tritium, said Robert Kelley, a U.S. nuclear-weapons engineer who directed IAEA inspections in Iraq both in 1992 and 2001. The radioactive isotope is needed to detonate the armaments believed to be in Israel’s stockpile.