As an Israeli I find the American protectiveness towards us a bit funny. There is some controversy about Israeli U weapons and I guess we could get a few hundred kilos of NU without much difficulty.

As for the use of NU in weapons, that strikes me as a real stretch.

First, there’s no evidence that the weapons you are postulating actually existed.

Second, there certainly have been claims over the years that the IDF has DU-based armor-piercing rounds, so the idea that the IDF did not have ready access to DU is questionable. The material has a number of commercial applications and is not, to my knowledge, generally subject to export controls, unless used as shielding for a radioactive source.

Third, I guess I just have a very hard time imagining that Israel would use whatever little NU it could get it hands on in this sort of an application. It makes no sense. Sorry.

If a “test assembly” is just one fuel assembly (or a dummy) then the source of all Uranium traces found is relatively small. Interesting.

We know from IAEA leaks that the Uranium is in the form of spherical particles but we don’t know how accurately spherical they are. In a melting/spraying scenario you would expect exact spheres as the surface tension is probably much stronger than aerodynamic forces. In a corrosion scenario you would expect that jagged shards will become more round. Note that the Uranium traces are supposed to be collected after about half a year including a rainy winter. This seems enough time for the corrosion to get to the core if the size is on the order of microns. The oxide is softer and has higher volume than the metal so you would expect everything to crack, assisting the corrosion. It requires further study but corrosion could possibly produce UO2 particles having a roughly spherical shape. Choosing the correct scenario should be the first task.

Why use NU instead of DU in munitions? A country with a significant enrichment industry has a lot of cheap DU and would probably use it as it’s better from a public relations viewpoint. Israel is said to get its US made DIME munitions only after the Syrian strike. It may have experimented with DIME by itself before (it’s relatively easy). Having no significant enrichment program and less worries about its public image it probably used NU. This is only a guess but it’s not unreasonable. Of course one can hypothesize it was the Syrians that were experimenting with DIME using Uranium they produced themselves. Anyway, the important question is whether a successfully exploded DIME would produce U3O8 instead of UO2.

What I’m trying to say is that we are far from having evidence that will be accepted in any court. Combined with the US administration strange silence and objections raised in the attached link I’m not convinced the USIC story is correct.

“Lots of aluminum” is my paraphrase. The IAEA has not formally reported on the graphite find or the aluminum and magnesium find; they’ve simply leaked out. According to the reports I’ve read, the IAEA has yet to determine the purity of the graphite, and doesn’t want to say anything until it does. And Hibbs indicates that the IAEA is not sure if the aluminum and magnesium traces aren’t, in fact, from the soil.

As far as conventional munitions go, I simply cannot imagine why NU would be used instead of DU. That strikes me as a real reach.

* I agree it’s possible that Syria had a military nuclear program started when NK could supply fuel and reprocessing support, then Western supervision tightened and NK couldn’t deliver, leaving Syria in a difficult position. In such a case why hurry and build the pump station?

* What is the difference between a “test assembly” fuel load and a “full load of fresh fuel”? Can you test a reactor with significantly less fuel than the working load?

* According to Hecker, NK fuel is Uranium metal with 0.5% Aluminum, not “lots of Aluminum”. Magnox cladding is made of Magnesium and Zirconium but the latter is not mentioned as found. Maybe Zirconium can be omitted if you don’t care about corrosion? In any case why the IAEA didn’t talk about the Graphite, Aluminum and Magnesium found or is it my memory failing me? If not, a kind of a conspiracy theory involving the IAEA may be implied here. By the way, some people think that the USIC explanation for this case qualifies as a conspiracy theory.

* The IAEA ruled out an ordinary Uranium penetrating munition. They didn’t rule out a DIME weapon made of natural Uranium. If the Uranium traces were pure UO2 some more research is needed to find if the DIME hypothesis is still viable. In temperatures that are high enough to create spherical droplets maybe you would expect U3O8 and not UO2?

Thanks for the new info!

See the info at NTI.

So it’s really curious that the MEAB website treats the uranium angle as incidental.

The region is quite uranium-poor. Avner Cohen’s book on the Israeli nuclear program describes the indigenous development of a technique to extract small amounts of uranium from phosphates. This activity doesn’t sound so different, even if the emphasis is being placed on purification of the phosphates.