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Read other letters about this article
Syria’s Short Stack
James Acton, Arms Control Wonk, May 13, 2008
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1881/syrias-short-stack
ISIS have released an impressive and comprehensive report
http://tinyurl.com/3kvzez (pdf)
detailing the deception techniques used by the Syrians for the Box On the Euphrates. It answers a question that has been bugging me for a while: Where are the protrusions? North Korea’s reactor has two such protrusions. There is the tall, thin stack attached to the reactor building itself and the much thicker but shorter cooling tower to the South. The stack is for venting carbon dioxide from the primary cooling circuit. The cooling tower is for the secondary water-cooled circuit. Syria’s reactor has (or more relevantly had) neither. You can do without a cooling tower if you happen to have a large river nearby that you can discharge the hot water into and, well, the Box On the Euphrates is not called that for nothing. But where is Syria’s stack? I had blithely been asserting for a while before USIC presented its evidence that if the BOE was a reactor it couldn’t have been all that close to completion because there was no stack. I was wrong. Abright and Brannan explain:
"According to US government experts, the reactor’s ventilation system was carefully hidden. The air intakes of the ventilation system are assessed to be along one wall of the building, according to these experts (see figure 23). They noted that two rectangular structures located against the wall have louvers at the top through which air can enter. One structure visible is what the intelligence community assessed could be the foundation and remaining part of the stack (see figure 25). According to US government experts, a pipe or small stack could have been extended through the fake roof after the reactor started operating. Until that time, the top of the stack may not have been more than a hole or cover in the fake roof, according to U.S. government experts (see figure 24)."
Cunning. I’ll add that reading it made me feel a bit sorry for the workers in the plant. Stacks are tall for a reason ; they contain slightly radioactive carbon dioxide that ought to be dispersed away from ground level. Makes you wonder what other safety corners Syria cut.
