Did Israel destroy a Syrian nuclear bomb factory a few weeks ago?

I wouldn't be surprised. And I still wonder how much of Saddam's WMD material was moved there before the war.

Rand,
I haven't had time to dig into archives, but distinctly remember Michael Ledeen making note of this at NRO back before we invaded in 2003. I recall the tone of his piece was along the lines of "don't get your hopes up about finding WMD", specifically mentioning that he believed stuff was being trucked into Syria. Of course, that just makes us alleged neo-cons look like we're fishing for excuses. But it certainly seems like a reasonable theory.

The other piece of this, IMNSHO, was the Libyan nuclear bits.

"Ten weeks have passed since the Israel Air Force attacked in Syria, and there is still no reliable information about the precise target that was destroyed, or about the importance and necessity of the attack"

---

There is nothing Reliable.

If we or the Israelis (some claim there is controversy over who actually did the bombing - all I know of course is what gets posted on the intar-tubes) did bomb a facility with weapons-grade nuclear material then there should be two possible consequences - we destroyed whatever containment vessels held the bomb grade material or we did not. In that case, if

1. The stuff was blown up there would be measurable radiation in the atmosphere and will come down as fall out. Any reports on that; or

2. We did not actually hit any of the weapons grade material, merely the facility. In that case, wouldn't be irresponsible to not send in Special Forces to recover that material?

= = =

Maybe we did #2 after all but if so, the powers that be in Tel Aviv and Washington appear to not be eager to spread the story.

Why are you blowing that cover?

Or maybe there never was any nuclear facility in the first place.

Without better data it is all mere speculation.

"1. The stuff was blown up there would be measurable radiation in the atmosphere and will come down as fall out. Any reports on that; or"

Bill, Blowing up stockpiles of plutonium, a very hevay element with high explosives and lofting tens of thousands of tons of strontium 90 and other nasties made by neutron bombardment of soil particles into the air by a thermonuclear ground burst are not remotely the same.

even small amounts of radioactive gasses are detectable.

It's foolish to trust the same intel sources who told
us Saddam had a nuclear program, when they are
saying it's really in Syria.

If the story is correct, the PU was in a solid state.

Plutonium is heavy and hard to loft in solid form.

If the Israelis did bomb a facility with weapons-grade nuclear material then there should be two possible consequences

The rumour I'm hearing is that the facility wasn't yet fully completed. The other rumour is that it was a rocket production facility.

Neither of these will leave a trail of radioactive anything.

Bill, Blowing up stockpiles of plutonium, a very hevay element with high explosives and lofting tens of thousands of tons of strontium 90 and other nasties made by neutron bombardment of soil particles into the air by a thermonuclear ground burst are not remotely the same.

It's the AC directly above again. These are two distict and completely seperate scenarios. The former involves a fairly large chunks of inactive and largely inert material that can be cleaned up by a guy with a hazmat suit, a spare afternoon and a bobcat.

The later is a highly active biologically absorbed dusting of material which would require the abandonment of hundreds of square kilometers of topsoil. Either in place, or into a Yucca mountain type facility. And that strange glow from your lawn and plants? It's just the Yttrium decay product undergoing beta decay and activating the phosphor fertiliser you threw outlast week. Ignore it, the kind old russian general over my shoulder says it's harmless.

It's the AC directly above again. These are two distict and completely seperate scenarios. The former involves a fairly large chunks of inactive and largely inert material that can be cleaned up by a guy with a hazmat suit, a spare afternoon and a bobcat.

Would that be a Syrian bobcat or an Israeli bobcat air lifted in?

I agree the fallout probably would not be especially dangerous but it would be detectable at a minimum by atmospheric sniffers and

If a valise of plutonium was hit, letting the Syrians clean up the residue means they get to keep the residue. Especially if this is Saddam
secret cache, why would we let the Syrians do the clean up and keep the residues?

More likely it was a lab that wasn't operational yet (no fissile material) or it was a lab for more prosaic WMDs such as nerve gas.

If there are no reports of increased levels of radiation and/or there was no follow up by air-mobile Special Forces to secure the site I am highly skeptical there was any weapons grade radioactive material at that location.

A facility for making rockets?

I can very easily believe that explanation.

I read a similar opinion as the article (minus the arguments about the structure) on NRO a while back. I still don't buy either that or the previous explanation.

Since nothing much is known about Operation Orchard and it's all speculation I can only rely on my gut feeling and it says it wasn't nuclear anything.

By memory some of the semi-official statements less likely to have been pre-approved/planted talk about a situation that:
- would cause mass panic if publicly known (remark from a high-office English source if I remember correctly so I guess that means mass panic in Europe as well as the Middle East)
- rivals the Book of Revelations (far nastier stuff than an atomic bomb or two or your average lethal neurotoxins)
- almost triggered world war three (or four or five if you're so inclined)
- will shock the world once it becomes known

A partially constructed nuclear reactor or weaponization facility or even a storehouse chock full of plutonium (even if heading for Iran) simply does not warrant such descriptions in my opinion. Nor does any amount of North Korean pledge-breaking (that stuff ought to be considered routine by now) including selling/transporting completed nuclear weapons to Syria or Iran.

Then again the aforementioned statements could simply be exaggerations (or maybe I'm just jaded).

So I'm wondering about something nastier and more immediate, something that would actually directly affect people outside the region, potentially globally. Still trying to figure it out but only something of that magnitude would justify the aforementioned remarks.

And yeah I forgot to mention that despite a severe lack of coverage/publicity it's quite clear that North Korea has been doing a serious amount of Dr. Mengele-like experiments on humans in some of their "biologically secured" death camps, and for a long while. So there's that angle as well. Of course that part could "just" be 90% sadism and nothing of real significance.

Sorry, HH, but "semi-official" just means that the person could have been wearing a uniform or suit while telling that fish story. Sure it could be some scary plague in the making. Or it could be something relatively mundane like a rocket factory. The apparent ease with which Israel punched through Syria's defenses would have been sufficient to keep Syria quiet.

"Semi-official" was my own chosen description so yeah I'm pretty much aware of what it means; as said they could be exaggerating or I could be jaded.

I would suspect the worse and put the onus on Syria to come up with the explanations.

Well, Syria chose to cover it up rather than claim that Israel was bombing, oh, baby food factories or something. So they did something. I favor that it was a just-built nuclear plant myself. The reason no radiativity was detected would be because the plant didn't have radiative material on hand yet.

The proximity to the river indicates a high likelyhood of a nuclear reactor. No containment vessel, true, but I doubt the Syrians place that high a value on reactor safety.

Even if it was something reletively mundane, it was an opertunity for the IDF/AF to remind the Syrians that "We can own your airspace any time we want to."

Well in response to the two last comments the article does make a good case for why it couldn't have been a nuclear reactor (the lack of cooling towers is pretty decisive).

Actually the articles comment of "it can't be a nuclear reactor because there are no cooling towers" really blew their technical credibility in my eyes. If there is a nearby river, why bother with cooling towers at all, if you can dump your waste heat straight into the river (in fact it would be cheaper to build it this way!)

Well Chernobyl was situated closer to a river than the Syrian site. Guess what: it had cooling towers. Big hint: we're not talking about hot water, we're talking about hot steam and usually quite a lot of it.

It doesn't have to be the western style cooling towers of sloping concrete, it can instead be the tubular steel ones that are very common with eastern European and Asian plants.

I mis-posted early but luckily it ended with a completed sentence, however I was going to add that since I'm no nuclear plant engineer or worker or similar you might want to read this (directly linked to the #Industrial section illustrating why you almost always have cooling towers). And if you say "Aha! But that means I'm right!" then realize that if that was the case you wouldn't be looking at a puny little pumping station on those satellite pictures from Syria but something far more massive.