Israel Debates on Nuclear Facilities After Japan Crisis

The risks of a major nuclear disaster following the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan have led Israelis to debate on its own nuclear facility.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday decided to reconsider plans to build a nuclear power plant, according to local media reports.

Several lawmakers in the Israeli parliament, Knesset, called for a non-military inspection of Israel's nuclear facilities, mainly the nuclear reactor in Dimona in the southern Negev desert.

Dov Khenin, chairman of the Knesset Joint Committee for Health and the Environment, said that Israel cannot continue to accept the lack of monitoring and auditing the activities of the nearby nuclear reactor.

The Dimona facility is a closed military area and not used for power production. As Israel hasn't signed the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty, no inspection has been done by outside parties.

Analysts speaking to Xinhua said although there has long been a concern of a strong earthquake in Israel, one can not compare what is happening in Japan to Israel as the Dimona facility is tiny compared to the Japanese reactors.

NO COMPARISON IN ISRAEL

According to Uzi Even, a professor from the school of chemistry at Tel Aviv University, the Dimona reactor is older and 10 times smaller than the ones in Japan, so the amount of radiation it can disperse is much weaker in case of an emergency.

The main problem at the nuclear power plant in Japan is that the cooling systems had failed as the generators were drenched by the giant tsunami wave, according to the professor. Meanwhile, similar scenario isn't possible in Israel as the Dimona plant is in the middle of the desert, he said.

However, Even still warned the risks that the facility poses. " I have been saying it for 10 years that the Dimona nuclear plant has done its job, and it's time to close it down because it poses an environmental danger," he told Xinhua.

The Negev nuclear research center, the full name of the Dimona facility, is a place of much controversy both in and outside Israel which maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity, neither confirming nor denying that it may or may not possess nuclear weapons.

The wail of secrecy covering Dimona has only been broken once, when in 1986 Mordechai Vanunu who was working as a technician at the facility smuggled its detailed plans to England where they were published by a British newspaper.

RISKS AND READINESS

Dr. Yizhaq Makovsky, from the Charney school of marine sciences at the University of Haifa, said as earthquakes are possible in Israel, most calculations are base on earthquakes with a strength around 7.1 on the Richter scale.

"Israel has a high chance of being struck by an earthquake, and the last big one was in 1927," he told Xinhua, adding that "the risk of an earthquake is being kept in mind."

According to Makovsky, the main tectonic fault line in the region is the Dead Sea line, which runs along the Dead Sea, north into the Jordan Valley, and onwards to Lebanon.

The geologists' calculation has been kept in mind of analysts like Prof. Eli Stern, who heads the Center for Risk Assessment at the Gertner Institute of the Sheba Medical Center outside Tel Aviv.

He told local daily Haaretz that, to the best of his knowledge, Israel's nuclear facilities are supposed to be able to withstand earthquakes of the magnitude expected in Israel and even to withstand quakes of a greater magnitude.

However, analysts warn that Israel still has a lot to do in general on coping with national disasters.

Dr. Efraim Laor from the University of Haifa told Xinhua that Israel needs a lot more efforts to improve its building infrastructure. The priorities should be "the schools which are in very bad conditions compared to other buildings."