Iran’s ballistic missile strike this weekend on the southern city of Dimona, which left dozens injured, sparked fears of a different kind of destruction as the US-Israeli campaign against Iran reaches its fourth week.

Saturday’s strike heavily damaged residential buildings in the dusty desert city. But it also raised urgent questions about the ostensible vulnerability of the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center, which lies 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) away, and Iran’s willingness to target it.

Despite those fears, a missile strike on the facility, even a direct hit on its underground reactor, would be unlikely to produce a radiological disaster — though it would certainly be a major symbolic win for Tehran.

Israeli nuclear experts stressed to The Times of Israel that the Dimona plant houses a small research reactor rather than a giant commercial power reactor, and that it is heavily defended by both active and passive defense measures.

Experts based their analysis solely on open sources about the research center, due to the largely classified nature of the facility.

According to foreign media reports, the site produces fissile material for nuclear weapons.

Foreign governments and media believe Israel to be the Middle East’s sole nuclear power, but Jerusalem has long refused to confirm or deny that it has nuclear weapons, and officially maintains that the Dimona plant focuses on research and energy provision.

“The most dangerous thing to bomb is an active nuclear reactor used for energy production. That’s not what exists in Israel,” explained Ori Nissim Levy, Chairman of the World Nuclear Forum and lecturer at Afeka Academic College of Engineering.

The Dimona reactor is estimated to be around 150 megawatts. For comparison, the Soreq Nuclear Research Center outside the central town of Yavne has a reactor of about five megawatts. Both fall far below the scale of large electricity-producing reactors, which typically have a production capacity of around 1,000 megawatts or more.

Attacks on active nuclear reactors in Iran’s Bushehr, or in countries like France, the United States, Canada and others, “would be far more dangerous,” Nissim Levy said, but for........

© The Times of Israel