Israel’s Soreq nuclear reactor to shut down in 2018

A nuclear reactor owned by Israel’s Soreq Nuclear Research Center will be shut down in 2018 and replaced with a particle accelerator, according to Dr. Shaul Horev, director-general of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission. Horev said the reactor was aging and the energy derived from its nuclear fuel rods was being depleted.

The accelerator, which will be used for the same nuclear physics and medical research purposes as the reactor, will save energy, and will be the first of its kind in the world.

In 1959, the U.S. gave Israel 150 nuclear fuel rods to power the reactor in the Soreq center. The reactor has since used 100 of those rods and managers at the center began to use the remaining rods more sparingly. Additional supplies of the rods were out of the question since Israel is not a signatory of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

In a secretive operation two years ago, Israel returned 102 spent rods to the U.S., a move that raised the security level of the site since it now contains less nuclear waste for disposal.

Soreq Director Hanoch Hirschfeld said that if the uranium had not run out, the reactor could have operated for the next 30 years.

Meanwhile, on March 26, a nuclear security summit is scheduled to take place in Seoul, South Korea. The summit was initiated by U.S. President Barack Obama, who will attend the meeting with 52 other heads of state. Horev and Deputy Prime Minister and Intelligence Services Minister Dan Meridor will represent Israel at the summit. North Korea, Syria and Iran have not received invitations to the event.

Israel has defined its aim at the summit as fostering cooperation with other countries on nuclear security with an emphasis on the struggle against nuclear terrorism. The theme underscores a fear that Iran, which makes use of terrorism, will not be satisfied with obtaining nuclear weapons and will work with external channels to cover up its fingerprints on a “dirty nuclear bomb” that it will provide to others to intensify its terrorism efforts throughout the world.

Dr. Yair Yariv, chief scientist at Soreq, said on Tuesday that Israel had carried out a special drill in January called “Black Cloud,” during which nuclear reactor personnel tested their level of preparedness for a terrorist attack resulting in the release of radioactive material. The drill took place in Haifa and simulated a situation in which a nuclear device exploded in a large city. During the drill, medical care was provided for the victims of the attack and an exercise was held to identify and evacuate people who sustained radioactive burns. In addition, a system produced by the U.S. Energy Department and used to identify radioactive materials was tested successfully.

The Soreq center includes a team tasked with entering an area of possible radioactive contamination to identify the dangerous material. The team is trained to take samples and send them to the center for evaluation. At the center, scientists will run tests on the samples to determine the level of radioactivity and the origin of the device.

So far, there has been no such attack anywhere in the world, but there have been some “work accidents” by terrorists which indicate there is a desire to carry out such an attack.

Israel’s radiological laboratory, located in the Soreq center, is one of only 16 in the world. According to reports, the Soreq center reactor was shut down during the recent rocket attacks in the south.

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