Dimona

Summary

Site in southern Israel of the nuclear reactor built with French support under agreements Peres finalised in 1956-1957, which became a synonym for Israel’s nuclear secret in Zionist Israel and the Question of Palestine (Zionist Israel and the Question of Palestine, PDF p.119-121 / printed p.110-112).

Peres’s memoir account has him finalising the agreement for a reactor at Dimona and the supply of natural uranium with Mollet and Bourgès-Maunoury alone during an adjournment at Sèvres before the protocol was signed (PDF p.119).
The three treaties by the end of 1957 provided, first, a forty — by other sources twenty-five — megawatt reactor and 385 tons of natural uranium (December 12, 1956), then cooperation in research and production of nuclear weapons (August 23, 1957), and regulation of construction and plutonium production (October 1957) (PDF p.120).
Construction in 1958-1960 was subject to the strictest military censorship; Ben-Gurion kept the decision to a small circle and off the political agenda, and on December 21, 1960 declared to the Knesset that Dimona served exclusively peaceful purposes (PDF p.121, 127).
Peres’s later maxim is quoted: “The path to Oslo is via Dimona.” (PDF p.124)
Mordechai Vanunu worked at the Nuclear Research Center near Dimona from 1977 to 1985 in a top-secret subterranean bunker system; the Sunday Times concluded one hundred to two hundred nuclear weapons had already been produced there (PDF p.130-131).

tags
aliases	Negev Nuclear Research Center