Agence France-Presse,
Washington: A US think tank Wednesday made public satellite images of a site in Syria that bore similarities to a North Korean nuclear reaction and may have been targeted in a secretive Israeli strike.
The images were taken by Digital Globe, a commercial satellite firm, just over a month before a September 6 Israeli air strike on a target inside Syria. No post-strike images of the site were shown.
US news reports have said the Israeli target was believed to be a suspected nuclear site, possibly in the early stages of construction with North Korean help, but Israel has refused to comment and Syria has denied the existence of a nuclear site.
The images showed a tall building about 780 meters (yards) east of the Euphrates River in eastern Syria and what appears to be a water pumping station directly on the river, the Institute for Science and International Security said.
“The tall building in the image may house a reactor under construction and the pump station along the river may have been intended to supply cooling water to the reactor,” said David Albright and Paul Brannan, the experts who analyzed the images.
They said the tall building was similar in shape to the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, but was not far enough along in its construction to make a definitive comparison.
A secondary structure also appears in the images but its purpose was unknown, they said in their report.
“If the design of the reactor is similar to a North Korean reactor, it is likely a small gas-graphite reactor of the type North Korea built at the Yongbyon nuclear site north of Pyongyang,” they said.
“The Syrian building size suggests that the reactor would be in the range of about 20-25 megawatts-thermal, large enough to make about one nuclear weapon's worth of plutonium each year,” they said.
“If Syria wanted to build nuclear weapons, it would need a specialized facility to chemically separate the plutonium from the irradiated fuel discharged from the reactor,” they said.
“It is unknown whether Syria has such a facility under construction or planned,” they said.
The site was located about 145 kilometers (87 miles) from the Iraqi border and 11 kilometers (6.6 miles) north of At Tibnah in the Dayr az Zawr region of Syria.
But Damascus has denied any such nuclear site and President Bashar Al-Assad has said only the target was an “unused military building” and that the bombs hit “nothing of consequence.”
In Israel, the raid has been shrouded in secrecy and information restricted to few officials. Israeli media has been allowed to publish only the fact that a raid occurred without comment from Israeli officials.
The US experts agreed that the images they released raised as many questions as they answered.
“How far along was the reactor construction project when it was bombed? What was the extent of nuclear assistance from North Korea? Which reactor components did Syria obtain from North Korea or elsewhere, and where are they now?”
“Is Syria able to produce any of the key reactor components itself? Could Syria have finished the reactor without on-going North Korean assistance? Did Syria plan to build a plutonium separation plant?”
The experts said the length of the outer walls of the tall building were roughly the same as those of the Yongbyon reactor.
“Trucks can be seen approximately 100 meters to the east of the tall building. This, along with evidence of heavy machinery tracks around this site, indicates recent construction activity,” they said.
An air strip about 3.5 kilometers (two miles) away would serve to provide quick transportation of personnel and officials, they said.
The roof of the Yongbyon facility is taller than that of the Syrian building but a square visible on the latter's roof indicated that construction of an upper roof was planned, their report said.
The experts said the North Koreans build reactors in place over time, thus avoiding the use of large cranes to lower pre-built pieces into place, they said. That method would allow them to cover the work on the reactor with a roof.
