really then why do Israeli officials talk about deactivating it in case of war with iran
"Research last year published in the
Journal of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science, found that a Scud missile landing within 115 feet of the reactor could damage its protective dome and cause a leak of radioactive gas, as well as disrupt its cooling systems."
"In 2008, the non-proliferation Arms Control Association simulated a rocket strike on the Dimona nuclear reactor under the guidelines of the US Department of Defense’s Hazard Prediction and Assessment Capability (HPAC), a method of estimating the effects of a nuclear disaster.
According to Ramberg, a successful rocket attack on the reactor — one that manages to get past the site’s air defenses and breaches the site’s containment dome — would “disperse the heavy water surrounding the reactor core; and create explosions and fire involving the nuclear fuel elements, ejecting radioactive material into a puff carried away from Dimona by prevailing winds.”"
who to believe, Benny or the journal of nuclear engineering and arms control studies
"However, as the countries and groups most expected to carry out such an attack would likely not be seeking to harm Jordanians or the mostly Palestinian residents of the West Bank, the ACA article sees late fall as the most likely time for an attack, not the winter or summer.
An attack in November would mean the fall winds would carry the “radioactive plume in a northwesterly direction over the city of Dimona (a community of 30,000 inhabitants) and then toward Beersheba before scattering toward Israel’s heavily populated coastal plain housing approximately four million inhabitants,” Ramberg wrote in 2008. The population sizes have not dramatically changed in the interim 11 years."
best time for an attack is October-November, good to know
by the way the French reactor was given in 1960s with life span of 40 years, now in use more than 60 years, who will supply another one