Word: reactor
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...fired a pair of video-guided precision "smart" bombs, to punch through predetermined spots in the domed concrete. The following aircraft launched their own explosives through the jagged holes: a dozen conventional bombs weighing 2,200 Ibs. each. After a series of shattering roars, the roof collapsed, burying the reactor's radioactive core under hundreds of tons of concrete and steel debris. Fire raged through the site. Two of the attackers, carrying cameras rather than heavy explosives, made a pass to film the scene. Then they streaked for home, ignoring ineffectual puffs of antiaircraft fire and leaving behind...
...total disregard of the truth that he was prepared to risk the peace of the Middle East, and even world peace, to achieve his ends." Skepticism increased when IAEA Director-General Eklund agreed with the Iraqis' claim that they had not been trying to make a weapon with their reactor. Even if the Iraqis had tried, said Eklund, they would need ten years to build one. U.S. estimates of the time that the Iraqis would need vary from two to ten years. Much would depend on how blatantly the Iraqis were willing to violate their peaceful commitment under the nonproliferation...
Begin built his rationale for the attack on Iraqi documents. Following the September raid by Iran on the Tammuz reactor, Iraq issued a statement that Begin read from a Baghdad newspaper. Quoted Begin: "The Iranian people should not fear the Iraqi nuclear reactor, which is not intended to be used against Iran, but against the Zionist enemy." He added that the imminent start-up of the reactor would enable Iraq to begin manufacturing, "in the near future, between three and five Hiroshima-type nuclear bombs of 20 kilotons...
Begin then gave a humanitarian twist to the raid. He declared that the reactor was going to start to process highly radioactive materials either the first week of July or the first week of September. Once the reactor was "hot," explained Begin, any successful bombing attack would unleash "a horrifying wave of radioactivity." In a ghoulish reference, he reminded listeners that Nazi mass murderers had used poisonous Zyklon B gas on their Jewish victims, and radioactivity "is also a poison." Said Begin: "In Baghdad, hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens would have been hurt. I for one would never have...
...mention was made then of the fact that the CIA had concluded in 1974 that Israel had nuclear weapons of its own or that Israel, unlike Iraq, has not signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and will not allow inspectors to visit its reactor at Dimona in the Negev Desert...