It is hard to tell the size of something from an aerial photograph without some reference point. Looking at the before and after images of the Syrian reactor it was not clear what its capacity was.
Hat tip to Charles at LGF for the link to this startling story at Yahoo/Associated Press:
Hayden: Syrian site could have produced fuel for 2 weapons
CIA Director Michael Hayden said Monday that the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in September would have produced enough plutonium for one or two bombs within a year of becoming operational.
U.S. intelligence and administration officials publicly disclosed last week their assessment that Syria was building a covert nuclear reactor with North Korean assistance. They said it was modeled on the shuttered North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, which produced a small amount of plutonium. The Syrian site, they said, was within weeks or months of being operational.
"In the course of a year after they got full up they would have produced enough plutonium for one or two weapons," Hayden told reporters after a speech at Georgetown University.
Crikey! The No. Ko's could only do a small fraction of that -- they took six years. Obviously, there will be estimating and measurement errors on both sides but this puppy looks to be big.
And the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency?
Neither the United States nor Israel told the International Atomic Energy Agency about the Syrian site until last week, about a year after they obtained what they considered to be decisive intelligence: dozens of photographs from a handheld camera that showed both the interior and exterior of the mysterious compound in Syria's eastern desert.
From the CIA's perspective, that intelligence was not the United States' to share with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, Hayden said.
"We've made it clear we did not have complete control over the totality of the information because obviously it was the result of a team effort," he said. "One has to respect the origin of the information in terms of how it is used."
Like Duuhhhhh...
Mohamed ElBaradei is a joke -- he is a lawyer not a scientist and he never met a dictator he didn't like. Iran, North Korea. And now Syria.
Muammar al-Gaddafi played it smart and was rewarded.
ED: - I would like to have a beer (or sorbet) with Muammar. He is strange but he is a consistent and artistic strange. Kinda like Prince
For more on the IAEA, read this and this. The last link has this sobering paragraph:
Mr. ElBaradei has coasted on the IAEA's reputation as the authoritative source of information on the world's nuclear secrets. Yet this is the same agency that was taken by surprise by nuclear projects in Libya, North Korea and Iraq in the 1980s. And now in Syria, which in September was voted co-chair of the IAEA's General Conference.
