Word: reactors
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Peres' letter was so vaguely worded for "security reasons," he claimed, should it fall into unfriendly hands?that Begin could send it to the Knesset with the charge that his rival opposed the reactor raid "in principle...
...deciding round of French presidential elections. As a "supreme civic duty," he warned Begin not to go ahead. Peres felt, correctly, as it happened, that Socialist François Mitterrand would win, and that there were signs that the new French President would do everything possible to "make the Iraqi reactor impotent, militarily." Peres also warned Begin that the raid would leave Israel as isolated "as a lonely shrub in the desert...
From the outset, Iraq has claimed that the nearly completed, $260 million French-built research reactor, scheduled to be activated this summer was intended only to train Iraqi scientists and technicians in nuclear technology. A facility was first discussed in 1974 by then French Premier Jacques Chirac and Iraq's Saddam Hussein. The final agreement led to the erection of the 70-MW reactor at the Tammuz nuclear center in the desert at El-Tuwaitha. It was supported by an 800-kW minireactor, separately housed and untouched by the raid, that was used for minor experiments and to prepare...
...weapons its possible production at the Tammuz site was central to the Israelis justification for the raid. The Iraqi-French contract required delivery of 70 kg of 93% enriched U-235 a grade and amount of uranium well suited for making nuclear weapons. In addition the 70-MW Tammuz reactor was 14 times as powerful as most research reactors, and Israeli physicists contend it could have been modified to readily produce weapons-grade plutonium...
...French, however, insist that any diversion of enriched uranium by the Iraqis for bombmaking, or conversion of the reactor for plutonium production would immediately have been spotted by the 150 French technical advisors at Tammuz or by International Atomic Energy Agency inspector charged with enforcing the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which Iraq signed in 1968. France had taken steps to minimize the possibility that nuclear fuel might be diverted for military purposes. Paris had promised, for example, to deliver only enough enriched uranium in a shipment to keep the reactor going, thus preventing the Iraqis from stockpiling the material. Last June...