Israel's nuke leak threatening ME

Wed, 13 Jun 2007

Probable explosion in Israel's Dimona nuclear plant may be more tragic than Chernobyl ‎nuclear disaster

A Jordanian expert in nuclear physics has warned that radioactive substances leaking from Israeli nuclear reactors are threatening the region.

"Radioactive leak from Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor coupled with the regime's nuclear waste buried in Jordan are posing serious hazards to not only people in Jordan but also in other regional states, including Egypt and Palestine," Iran's Fars news agency quoted Nabil Atoum as saying on Tuesday.

The expert drew an analogy between the humanitarian and ecological catastrophe caused by the Russian reactor Chernobyl two decade ago and the probable nuclear tragedy that can be caused by the vulnerable Dimona reactor, warning this could set off a "new Zionist Holocaust".

He cautioned that the magnitude of an Israeli reactor catastrophe can be even greater than Russia's Chernobyl.

Atoum said Amman has admitted it has no immediate solution to deal with a probable catastrophe at Israel's Dimona nuclear plant, and called for international mediation and an investigation into the Israeli regime's nuclear activities.

Meanwhile, Ali Hatr, a member of Jordan's Resistance Committee exclaimed that although Jordanian officials are aware of the contamination, they have made no efforts to avert a nuclear disaster.

He expressed serious doubts over Jordan's ability to control such disaster on its own. "Even the former Soviet Union, which was a far greater power than Jordan, could not control the contamination caused by the Chernobyl reactor meltdown," he compared.

The Zionist regime possesses the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal with at least 200 nuclear warheads. Months ago, prime minister Ehud Olmert admitted that Israel has nuclear arms, abandoning the ambiguity policy Tel Aviv had adopted over its nuclear weapons for decades.

The Chernobyl disaster was a major accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986 which was followed by radioactive contamination of the surrounding geographic area.

A plume of radioactive fallout drifted over parts of western Soviet Union, eastern, western and northern Europe, and eastern North America. Large areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia also were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people.

About 60 percent of the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus, according to official post-Soviet data.