Satellite images, released by Google, show how Iran's heavy water reactor and heavy water plant at Arak has changed over the past year. New buildings are highlighted on the right-hand panel. The IR-40 reactor was inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in October 2011. The agency said in its recent report that, "construction of the facility was ongoing and the coolant heat exchangers had been installed". BBC
Iran’s Vexing Plutonium Reactor -- S. Fred Singer, Washington Times
A successful Israeli strike against it would ‘shuffle the deck’
Iran has been constructing a “heavy-water” nuclear reactor near Arak, capable of producing weapons-grade Plutonium-239 — sufficient for about one bomb per year. This program is in addition to the ongoing production of fissionable Uranium-235 by isotope enrichment with centrifuges.
The Geneva Interim Agreement, announced in November, would stop Iran’s reactor construction — at least according to the White House press release. Iran does not share this interpretation. Negotiations are continuing in Vienna to try to settle this dispute.
Meanwhile, Israel, not bound by the Geneva Agreement, may decide to bomb the Arak reactor and eliminate one sure route for Iran to gain a nuclear weapon. In 1981, Israel bombed Osiris, a similar reactor, under construction in Iraq. In Sept 2007, in Operation “Mivtza Bustan” (“Orchard”), Israel destroyed a plutonium reactor being built by Syria — with North Korean assistance and financed by Iran — at al-Kibar, Syria. (Ironically, the term “bustan,” identical in both Arabic and Hebrew, is not of Semitic origin, but a loan word from classical Persian.)
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My Comment: I do not see such an attack happening now .... and in the short term. Israel's military capabilities are limited, and any strike against Iran will need to target more than one site.
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