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Part 2 of 2 Parts (please read Part 1 first)
About one and a quarter mile west of the reactor at Dimona, there are boxes stacked in two rectangular holes that appear to have bases made of concrete. The boxes on the concrete bases are similar to storage casks for nuclear waste at nuclear power plants.
Older satellite images of the site suggest that the excavations began in early 2019 and have progress slowly ever since then. It is possible that the excavations are related to efforts to either update or replace the old reactor. Avner Cohen is a professor of nonproliferation studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California, who has written extensively on Dimona. He said, “I believe that the Israeli government is concerned to preserve and maintain the nation's current nuclear capabilities. If indeed the Dimona reactor is getting closer to decommissioned, as I believe it is, one would expect Israel to make sure that certain functions of the reactor, which are still indispensable, will be fully replaced.”
Daryl G. Kimball is the executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association. He said that whatever “the Israeli government is doing at this secret nuclear weapons plant is something for the Israeli government to come clean about.” He also suggested that Israel might want to produce more tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, which is a relative faster-decaying radioactive byproduct that can be used to boost the explosive yield of some nuclear warheads. It is also possible that Israel wants fresh plutonium recovered from the spent reactor fuel “to replace or extend the life of warheads already in the Israeli nuclear arsenal.”
It is assumed that Israel constructed the Dimona facility to build nuclear weapons as it has faced several wars with it Arab neighbors since Israel was founded in 1948 following the Holocaust in World War II. Israel understood that an atomic weapons program would provide a way to deter enemies from attacking.
Opponents criticize Israel’s strategy of opacity with respected to its possession of nuclear weapons. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif focused on the work at Dimona this week as Iran prepared to restrict access by inspectors from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency amid tensions with the West over its collapsing 2015 nuclear treaty with Western powers. Zarif told Iran’s state television’s English-language department, Press TV, “Any talk about concern about Iran's nuclear program is absolute nonsense. Let's be clear on that: It's hypocrisy.”
In the 1960s, Israel utilized claims about Egypt’s missile and nuclear weapons program as a way to divert attentions from the Dimona facility. Now they may do the same thing to shift attention to the Iranian nuclear program and the possibility that Iran will develop nuclear weapons. Jeffery Lewis is a professor also teaching nonproliferation issues at Middlebury. He said, “If you're Israel and you are going to have to undertake a major construction project at Dimona that will draw attention, that's probably the time that you would scream the most about the Iranians.”