On 3 October 1957, France and Israel concluded an agreement for
the construction of a 24-megawatt (MW) research reactor at Dimona
in the Negev Desert. France also undertook to build a chemical re-
processing plant, although this understanding was not committed to
writing. French and Israeli operatives started building the complex in
secret. French customs officials were told that certain components,
such as the reactor tank, were being shipped to a desalinization plant
in Latin America. Moreover, the French Air Force secretly flew as
much as four tons of heavy water to Israel, after the French purchased
it from Norway on condition that it would not be transferred to a third
country.
In 1960 the construction work encountered problems when France
urged Israel to submit Dimona to international inspections. France
feared a scandal when it became clear that it had aided Israel, espe-
cially on a reprocessing plant. Israel worked out a compromise:
France would supply the uranium and components that were prom-
ised and would not insist on international inspections as long as Is-
rael assured France that it had no intention of making nuclear
weapons.
The reactor’s existence could not be kept secret from the world. In
1958, U.S. U-2 spy planes took pictures of the facility under con-
struction, although the United States did not identify it at that time as
a nuclear reactor. It was variously explained as a textile plant, an agri-
cultural station, or a metallurgical research facility. Eventually, how-
ever, it was impossible to deny that the facility was anything other
than a reactor because of its characteristic dome shape. In December
1960, Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion announced that Di-
mona was a nuclear research center for “peaceful purposes.”
Dimona achieved criticality in 1964. French officials were sur-
prised to discover that the cooling circuits were designed to support
three times the original power level (24 MW). Without additional
cooling, power was indeed scaled up to 70 MW years later.
Besides the reactor and the underground reprocessing plant at Di-
mona, there is a uranium-processing facility, a waste treatment plant,
a fuel fabrication facility, a laboratory, and a depleted-uranium-bullet
factory. It also contains a facility for uranium enrichment tests.
Presently it is feared that the aged reactor, functioning for more than
40 years, is in a poor state. Former workers have revealed to the mediaNUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM• 21706-102 (03) H-P.qxd 3/24/06 7:25 AM Page 217