Israel Mulls Going Nuclear, Again

Can Israeli civil reactor pretensions overcome abiding concerns regarding the military focus of the country's secretive nuclear program? Dr Dominic Moran asks for ISN Security Watch.

Israel is again floating plans for the development of an atomic generation capacity, but is facing considerable challenges.

Speaking to reporters at a nuclear conference in Paris earlier this month, Israeli National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau revealed that his government was interested in building civil nuclear reactors as a means to end Israel's current reliance on coal-fired generation and to secure energy independence.

This, after the external pageIsrael Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) and Israel Electricity Corporation (IEC) announced that they would start planning the infrastructure for a civil nuclear plant and develop a new course to train nuclear electrical engineers.

It is no coincidence that these announcements come as plans for a new coal-fired power plant begin to lose momentum, in light of environmental concerns.
 
The CEO of Israeli consultancy, Eco-Energy MS, Dr Amit Mor, told ISN Security Watch that relying on coal and gas generation "would be too risky" for Israel. It is "crucial to find additional sources of base load generation […] and the most suitable is nuclear energy," he said.

This view is not shared by some local and international environmental groups, which argue that concerns regarding reactor safety, proliferation risks, water use and nuclear waste are all factors that militate against civil nuclear development.

Multiple challenges

The idea of developing a civil reactor plant has been raised repeatedly over the years by Israeli officials as a means to cope with projected generation capacity shortages.

In February 2007, then-IEC head Uri Bin-Nun claimed that the IAEC was planning the fabrication of a new 2,000MW reactor for electricity generation.

A site has been prepared for an atomic power plant near Shivta in the Negev Desert. The unavoidable situation of the plant close to both Egypt and Jordan is likely to provoke the same consternation in Amman and Cairo as the Dimona reactor has caused.

Any future reactor build is likely to face considerable delays due to the over-extension of international reactor companies and domestic dysfunction.

Importantly, the long-term plan of recurrent Israeli governments for a radical restructuring of electricity supply - involving the crushing of the powerful electricity workers' union; the splitting up and privatization of generation facilities; and establishment of a fast track process for project selection - appears to be foundering.

Given the global shortage of nuclear engineers and the Israeli program's relative isolation, efforts to develop the necessary knowledge base for the operation of a civil reactor program also face significant obstacles.

Supply problems

"The major challenge is to get the approval of suppliers; to get the technology. Israel is not a signatory to the [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] NPT and therefore will find difficulties in purchasing a nuclear power plant," Mor confirmed.

France and other Nuclear Supplier Group states may prove willing to play a role in developing atomic generation in Israel or in furnishing a binational or multinational reactor program involving Israel and Jordan or Egypt.

The idea of a Jordanian-Israeli reactor partnership is the most likely of the cooperation scenarios. Indeed, a joint reactor build was recently floated by Landau and external pagesummarily rejected by Jordan Atomic Energy Commission head Khaled Toukan.

The US-Indian 123 Agreement, allowing US nuclear technology and material supply, would appear to provide a paradigm for Israel to push for a similar arrangement.

However, the US appears strongly opposed to this linkage and seems unlikely to agree to Israel building a new reactor, given the potential strategic impact both on the Arab-Israeli peace process and in promoting regional nuclear proliferation.

The military program

Israeli fissile material stocks have allegedly been built up through the operation of the larger of Israels' two reactors at Dimona.

Various plutonium production estimates, and the impossibility of knowing at what level of capacity the reactor has worked at down the years, lead to divergent projections of the total number of nuclear weapons in the alleged Israeli arsenal, with most coming in at between 70-200.

Iranian military and political figures external pagehave threatened in the past to target the Dimona reactor in a retaliatory strike, should their country's nuclear facilities come under attack. 

In 2006, the external pageStockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported that potential launch platforms for Israel's nuclear arsenal include the Jericho intermediate range ballistic missile, some F-16s and Dolphin submarines purchased from Germany. Israel's 25 F15I aircraft may also have been modified to carry nuclear weapons.

Shifting strategic milieu

Israel cannot join the NPT under the current terms of the treaty but has benefited from the membership of Arab states and Iran.

The burgeoning Iranian nuclear crisis has upset this long-term strategic imbalance, promoting a wave of Arab state nuclear announcements and related actions to select reactor sites and international partners.

Israel now has important and far-reaching decisions to make with regard to the utility of its nuclear 'deterrent', as it serves as a further prompt to the possible, highly unpredictable regional spread of nuclear materials and technologies (some of them dual-use).

The potential threat of an Iranian atomic weapons capacity looms large and is a key diplomatic tool for Israel in building support for the isolation of the Islamic Republic.

However, it is clear that a pre-emptive Israeli strike on Iranian facilities is receding as a strategic option and that a potential nuclear-armed standoff would be extremely dangerous given their deep mutual antipathy and complete lack of communication channels.

A member of the NPT review preparatory committee, former Knesset member Issam Makhoul, told ISN Security Watch that he did not want to see a nuclear armed Iran, but believed that the international community should focus on the Israeli program.

Nuclear development "endangers the security of the Israeli people and of the people of the area," he said.

Interestingly, external pagethere are indications that a debate on the strategic and security utility of nuclear weapons may have started in the upper echelons of the Israeli military.

If ongoing, this debate will play itself out behind closed doors.

In the meantime, the Gordian knot tying civil nuclear pretensions to military program secrecy looks set to militate against Israeli energy reactor plans being set in concrete anytime soon.

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