WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Significant new construction is underway at the Dimona site in the occupied territories, which is officially known as the Negev Nuclear Research Center, the International Panel on Fissile Material (IPFM) reported referring to commercial satellite imagery of the facility.
IPFM is an independent group of arms-control and non-proliferation experts from both nuclear weapon and non-nuclear weapon states.
According to the group, the images that were published by the IPFM on Thursday show construction around a massive excavation area measuring approximately 140 meters by 50 meters.
IPFM also argued that the construction site is located "in the immediate vicinity of the buildings that house the nuclear reactor and the reprocessing plant”.
The purpose of the construction remains unclear, and the Zionist regime has not commented on the matter yet.
The regime neither admits nor denies it is in possession of a nuclear arsenal amid reports that the occupying regime has about 90 nuclear warheads.
Pavel Podvig, a researcher with the program on science and global security at Princeton University in New Jersey, told The Guardian that the construction had allegedly kicked off a couple of years ago.
"It appears that the construction started quite early in 2019, or late 2018, so it’s been under way for about two years, but that’s all we can say at this point”, the scientist claimed.
The non-profit organization Federation of American Scientists (FAS) estimates that Tel Aviv currently has at least 90 nuclear warheads, something that makes the regime the only possessor of nuclear arms in the Middle East.
According to FAS, the warheads were produced from plutonium obtained at the Dimona facility’s heavy water reactor.