The Skeptic الشكاك

441 Syrian ‘Reactor Site’ Redux

ISIS has published the photos that were the subject of that WaPo article yesterday and has sent around a brief report. Press release after the break. Full report here. Update: new satellite photos show the structure has been removed.

As an interesting addendum, The Guardian reports today that Palestinians are using satellite imagery from Google Earth to plan attacks against Israel.

Suspect Reactor Construction Site in Eastern Syria: The site of the
September 6 Israeli Raid?

by David Albright and Paul Brannan
October 23, 2007
The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS)

ISIS recently obtained commercial satellite imagery from
DigitalGlobe taken on August 10, 2007 of a large portion of Eastern
Syria along the Euphrates River. After an extensive search and
analysis of the imagery, ISIS found a site that could be the target
of the Israeli raid inside Syria on September 6, 2007. The tall
building in the image may house a reactor under construction and
the pump station along the river may have been intended to supply
cooling water to the reactor (Figure 1).

The tall building, located approximately 780 meters from the river,
is square with approximately 47 meter length sides. There is what
appears to be a pump station located on the banks of the river
directly west of the tall building. A reactor requires a large
volume of water for cooling and this pump station could serve that
purpose. The purpose of the secondary building in the image (see
Figure 1) is unknown, but it does not appear to be a temporary
structure. Trucks can be seen approximately 100 meters to the east
of the tall building. This, along with evidence of heavy machinery
tracks around this site, indicates recent construction activity.

This site is approximately 145 kilometers from the Iraqi border and
situated 11 kilometers north of At Tibnah in the Dayr az Zawr
region of Syria (Figure 2). There is an airstrip located 3.5
kilometers north of the site (Figure 3). Such an airstrip would
serve as quick transportation of personnel and officials.

ABC News reported on Friday, October 19th, 2007 that Israel had
recruited a spy to take ground photographs of the reactor
construction from inside the complex. Recruiting a spy to take
ground photographs of an exposed reactor vessel is unnecessary—as
high resolution non-commercial satellite imagery would negate this
need. If, however, the reactor vessel and associated shielding were
surrounded by a building and covered with a roof, a spy may have
been necessary to take photographs from inside the reactor
building.

The Washington Post reported on Friday, October 19th, 2007 that an
official described a facility as similar in structure to a North
Korean reactor. North Korean reactor construction is based on an
old Russian model—in which the reactor vessel is built gradually
and is not brought to the site already constructed or in large
pieces, requiring a large crane to move heavy equipment inside.
This North Korean/Russian approach would mean that a roof would be
placed on a building earlier than in some other reactor designs,
and it would hide what was inside the building earlier in the
construction timeline.

In comparing the five megawatt-electric (or 20-25 megawatt-thermal)
reactor building at North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear facility to
this suspected Syrian reactor building, the length of the outer
walls of the structures are approximately the same (see Figures 4
and 5). The taller roof of North Korea’s reactor measures
approximately 32 meters by 24 meters on its sides. There also
appears to be a faint square on top of the Syrian building’s
roof. It is unclear whether something would be built there, but
its dimensions, 24 meters by 22 meters, are consistent with the
subsequent construction of an upper roof. From the image, the
Syrian building is similar in shape to the North Korean reactor
building, but the Syrian building is not far enough along in its
construction to make a definitive comparison.

If the design of the reactor is similar to a North Korean reactor,
it is likely a small gas-graphite reactor of the type North Korea
built at the Yongbyon nuclear site north of Pyongyang. The Syrian
building size suggests that the reactor would be in the range of
about 20-25 megawatts-thermal, large enough to make about one
nuclear weapon’s worth of plutonium each year (see Figures 4 and
5).

If Syria wanted to build nuclear weapons, it would need a
specialized facility to chemically separate the plutonium from the
irradiated fuel discharged from the reactor. It is unknown whether
Syria has such a facility under construction or planned.

On October 23, 2007, Google Earth posted imagery that covers a wide
swath of eastern Syria and includes this site. The suspected
reactor building can be seen, but the secondary structure and the
pump station are both missing in this image. The exact date on
which the image was taken is not provided by Google Earth, but it
must be significantly earlier than August 10, the date of the
DigitalGlobe imagery obtained by ISIS. The absence of the pump
station would make interpretation of the purpose of the site very
difficult.

The images raise as many questions as they answer. How far along
was the reactor construction project when it was bombed? What was
the extent of nuclear assistance from North Korea? Which reactor
components did Syria obtain from North Korea or elsewhere, and
where are they now? Is Syria able to produce any of the key reactor
components itself? Could Syria have finished the reactor without
on-going North Korean assistance? Did Syria plan to build a
plutonium separation plant?

No Comments yet »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.

I'm Reading: