The joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy has unanimously recommended to both the Senate and House to extend for two more years the U.S. nuclear research program that involves Israel’s reactor at Sirac, about 30 miles from Tel Aviv. Both branches of Congress were expected to accept the recommendation embraced by a concurrent resolution offered by the 18-member committee of nine Senators and an equal number of Representatives.
This joint program has been in operation since the reactor was set up during the Eisenhower Administration. The principal U.S. share in the program at present is its sale of enriched fuel to Israel for the reactor’s operation. The program is shielded by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s safeguards and a bilateral U.S.-Israel agreement on safeguards that back up those of the IAEA, a committee source told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The reactor was described by the aide as extremely small and used strictly for research, particularly for medical and agricultural purposes. Among its basic and applied research projects are physics measurements and food preservation. The latter entails radiation that would extend the shelf life of oranges. A slight radiation to the oranges enables them to last much longer than in their un-radiated state and this would allow Israel to expand its market considerably, the committee source explained.
The Sirac station is apart from the atomic project known as Dimona near Beersheba which was established in 1963. The Dimona reactor was probably made in France and is five times the size of the Sirac device, the aide indicated.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
