UN nuclear watchdog finds uranium traces at Syrian reactor that Israel bombed in 2007

The UN nuclear watchdog has found traces of uranium in Syria in its investigation into a building Israel destroyed in 2007 that the agency has long believed was probably an undeclared nuclear reactor, it says in a report to member states.

The government of now-deposed Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad said the Deir Ezzor site that included the building was a conventional military base.

The International Atomic Energy Agency concluded in 2011 the building was “very likely” to have been a reactor built in secret that Damascus should have declared to it.

The agency has been trying since then to come to a definitive conclusion, and under a renewed push last year it was able to take environmental samples at three unnamed locations “that were allegedly functionally related” to Deir Ezzor, it says in the confidential report seen by Reuters.

The agency found “a significant number of natural uranium particles in samples taken at one of the three locations. The analysis of these particles indicated that the uranium is of anthropogenic origin, ie that it was produced as a result of chemical processing,” the report says.

The term “natural” indicates the uranium was not enriched. The report doesn’t come to a conclusion as to what the traces found mean.

“The current Syrian authorities indicated that they had no information that might explain the presence of such uranium particles,” the report says, adding that the Islamist-led government had granted the IAEA access to the site concerned again in June this year to take more environmental samples.

The report says the IAEA is still planning to visit Deir Ezzor and will evaluate the results of the environmental samples taken at the other site.

“Once this process has been completed and the results evaluated, there will be an opportunity to clarify and resolve the outstanding safeguards issues related to Syria’s past nuclear activities and to bring the matter to a close,” it says.