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Construction Detected at Israeli Nuclear Weapons Site
October 2025
Satellite imagery has revealed construction in progress near the Israeli city of Dimona at the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center, a facility that is key to the Israeli nuclear weapons program, the Associated Press reported Sept. 3.
Three of the seven experts whom AP consulted on the images, taken by Planet Labs PBC, assessed that the construction was for a new heavy water reactor. All seven believed that the activity was linked to Israel’s nuclear weapons program.
“It’s probably a reactor—that judgement is circumstantial but that’s the nature of these things,” Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies told the AP. “It’s very hard to imagine it is anything else.”
The satellite imagery depicts a new structure under construction on a site that previously was deeply excavated in work publicized by the International Panel on Fissile Materials in February 2021. (See ACT, April 2021.) The panel estimated that the excavation began around 2018 or 2019.
Israel denies the existence of a nuclear weapons program and is not a state-party to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The Federation of American Scientists noted in 2007 that estimates for the Israeli nuclear stockpile range from 70 to 400 warheads, although the lower end of the estimate is likely to be more accurate.
In June 2025, Israel conducted strikes on Iran’s Natanz, Isfahan, and Arak nuclear facilities in an attempt to prevent the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon. (See ACT, July/August 2025.)—LIPI SHETTY