Israel to shut Dimona and Nahal Sorek reactors in the event of missile attacks
Haaretz reports that in the event of missile attacks on the home front by Iran, Hezbullah or Hamas, Israel will shut down its Dimona and Nahal Sorek nuclear reactors. The aim of such nuclear stoppage would be to prevent damage to the reactors' outlying area, should missiles penetrate the facilities' defense shields. A decision for such a stoppage was reached by the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, in coordination with the IDF Home Front Command.Iraq shot SCUD missiles at Dimona in 1991. They missed.
The working assumption shared by the Home Front Command and the IAEC management officials responsible for the two reactors is that the multilayered defense systems, which feature anti-missile missiles calibrated to intercept missiles at various heights, along with fortified installations, should be sufficiently effective to minimize damage in an attack against the reactors.
Nonetheless, in principle any defense system can be penetrated. For this reason, nuclear activity in the reactors will be halted should warnings come of impending war. This stoppage procedure could also be applied in non-war periods of escalated skirmishes that involve rocket attacks against Israel.
The official explanation for this policy is that activity at the reactors is carried out for research purposes, and such research work does not need to be carried out constantly, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The IDF and the IAEC, which is subordinate to the prime minister, are prepared for the possibility of an attempted attack on the reactors during a conflict with Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas and other Palestinian organizations in the Gaza Strip.
Such attacks could be carried out using missiles, rockets, planes or drones. Workers at the reactors will continue to report for duty, but will be active in specially fortified installations and bunkers, as happens with workers employed at other infrastructure or security facilities.
As long as this doesn't prevent us from deploying any of our weapons, it shouldn't matter.
Labels: Dimona nuclear reactor, Israeli nuclear capability
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:30 PM
3 Comments:
Can't count on them missing. It's accidentally random. In summer '06, after the soldiers were attacked/kidnapped, the rockets started flying. One hit some kind of command and control thing up north, causing consternation. (We were at Yad Vashem and people started running around yelling. We thought it was because of the Japanese prime minister who pulled up in a limo, but it turned out it was because a rocket actually hit something that someone might want to hit and they weren't sure it was random luck rather than a guided system.)
I think it's a wise move, if you look at Japan at what can go wrong with a nuclear plant it's not a plant to take chances with.Israel is small enough as it is you don't need a highly contaminated area on top of it.
I hope that along with the missile shield they also have some phalanx guns for any that get past the missile shield.
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