Independent experts say Syria was building nuke facility

I must admit, this news surprises me. Assuming David Albright’s analysis is on point, did the Syrians really believe they would get away with it?

Independent experts have pinpointed what they believe to be the Euphrates River site in Syria that was bombed by Israel last month, and satellite imagery of the area shows buildings under construction roughly similar in design to a North Korean reactor capable of producing nuclear material for one bomb a year, the experts say.

Photographs of the site taken before the secret Sept. 6 airstrike depict an isolated compound that includes a tall, boxy structure similar to the type of building used to house a gas-graphite reactor. They also show what could have been a pumping station used to supply cooling water for a reactor, say experts David Albright and Paul Brannan of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS).

U.S. and international experts and officials familiar with the site, who were shown the photographs yesterday, said there was a strong and credible possibility that they depict the remote compound that was attacked. Israeli officials and the White House declined to comment.

Check out ISIS’s report here (pdf). Arms-control expert Jeffrey Lewis of Harvard, who has yet to comment on this specific report, is deeply skeptical of an ABC News story that appears to describe the same photographs. Lewis notes that the North Koreans use gas, not water, to cool Yongbyon. I’ll be interested to see his take on this new report, given that Albright is a well-respected analyst.