Iran and Israel exchange attacks – a day after Tehran rules out nuclear negotiations

Israel’s stated goal in its fight with Iran is to dismantle its potential to build a nuclear weapon, which has been questioned globally, even the United States, who released a report suggesting Iran was no-where near building nuclear weapon.

The American spy agency say Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003, shortly after the U.S. invaded Iraq.

It isn’t clear if Israel has the military might to do it alone, with some of the key sites Iran is using to store and process nuclear material protected deep underground.

So far, Israel has conducted strikes on nuclear sites like Natanz, Khondab, and cities like Isfahan and Fordow.

Yesterday, Israel said it had struck the Bushehr site, Iran’s only active nuclear plant, before seemingly rowing back the comments.

But what are the risks from such attacks, and could they lead to a nuclear fallout of some kind in a region home to tens of millions of people?

Underground safety

Peter Bryant, a professor at the University of Liverpool who specialises in radiation protection science, said he was not too concerned about the risks so far.

While there had been strikes on the likes of Khondab, a lot of the damage reported so far is external, and such facilities are designed to contain internal issues.

“Uranium is only dangerous if it gets physically inhaled or ingested or gets into the body at low enrichments,” he said.

Nuclear material could end up buried

Darya Dolzikova, a senior research fellow at London thinktank RUSI, said attacks on facilities at the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle – the enrichment stages where uranium is prepared for use in a reactor – pose primarily chemical, not radiological risks.

Sites like Natanz and Isfahan are enrichment sites.

Such chemicals could be dispersed, but such a risk is again lower with underground facilities.

Simon Bennett, who leads the civil safety and security unit at the University of Leicester in the UK,  said Israeli strikes were likely to end up “burying nuclear material in possibly thousands of tonnes of concrete, earth and rock”.

Risk of ‘absolute catastrophe’ at power plant

The major concern would be if the Israelis attacked the Bushehr nuclear reactor.

Richard Wakeford, honorary professor of epidemiology at the University of Manchester, said that while enrichment facilities would remain a chemical issue, a reactor strike would be a “different story”.

This could lead to the release of radioactive elements either in a plume of volatile materials or into the sea, he added.

James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said an attack on Bushehr “could cause an absolute radiological catastrophe”.

Gulf State water supply could be vulnerable

For the Gulf States, any potential impact on Bushehr threatens to contaminate Gulf waters, jeopardising a critical source of desalinated potable water.

In a number of Gulf countries like the UAE,  Qatar and Bahrain, desalinated water accounts for a huge amount of drinking water.

Nidal Hilal, professor of engineering and director of New York University Abu Dhabi’s Water Research Centre, said: “Coastal desalination plants are especially vulnerable to regional hazards like oil spills and potential nuclear contamination.”