VIII. Israeli nuclear forces

Chapter:

7. World nuclear forces

Source:

SIPRI Yearbook 2012

Author(s):

Shannon N. Kile, Phillip Schell, Hans M. Kristensen, Vitaly Fedchenko, Alexander Glaser, Zia Mian International Panel on Fissile Materials

Israel continues to maintain its long-standing policy of nuclear opacity, neither officially confirming nor denying that it possesses nuclear weapons.¹ However, Israel is widely believed to have used the heavy-water research reactor at the Negev Nuclear Research Center, near Dimona, to produce plutonium for a nuclear weapon arsenal. There is little publicly available information about the Dimona reactor’s operating history. According to one estimate, it could have produced 690–950 kilograms of weapon-grade plutonium as of 2011 (see section X below). Only part of this plutonium may have been used to produce weapons.