Syrian Reactor?

You can view what's believed to be the Israeli-bombed Syrian reactor via Google Earth, or Google Maps here. Use Google Earth, the Maps application doesn't have the zoom required. Google Earth does - for now, anyway.

Comments

[GC]

It appears Goggle was removed the higher resolution pictures from their maps. Goggle aiding and abetting terrorist regimes.

[chris]

You should consider 'goggling' hooked on phonics. It might help.

[seekeronos]

"--- It appears Google was removed the higher resolution pictures from their maps. Google aiding and abetting terrorist regimes. ---"

And why am I not surprised?

Google is almost as far to the left as the NYT, and supports the ultra-liberal biased media GroupSludgeThink. Co-conspirators and defeatists indeed, and/or taking payoffs from Butcher Assad.

[Joe Citizen]

I'm no nuclear scientist, so what do I know....

Looks like a square building to me. Don't reactors usually have some very large steam venting stack or something? And wasn't it reported to be round?

[Observer]

Joe

I am a nuke industry experienced person and this could pass for the containment building for the reactor. The rest of the support infrastructure may have not been built yet.

The copyright shows the pic's at 2007 but how long ago?

A new bird has just been launched with 3 meter resolution so we will wait and see how long it takes for it to get a pass over this area to update the google data base.

The spot image we have is like in the 10 meter range and the new bird that went up from another company is still in test and verification mode and not scheduled for data collection till early November if I recall correctly.

[LarryD]

"Don't reactors usually have some very large steam venting stack or something?"

Power reactors of Western design, yes. This has supposedly a gas-graphite reactor designed to produce fissionable material for weapons.

Remember Chernobyl? That was also a graphite reactor optimized for fissionable material production, electrical power was a by-product. No Western-style containment, just a building to keep the reactor from being exposed to the weather. Wikipedia's article on the disaster has a picture of the Chernobyl plant, it's vent stack is a lot smaller than in Western designs, and comes up out of the building, where in Western designs the cooling towers are separate structures, and much larger.

[Observer]

Correction the new bird launched has 1/2 meter resolution but still has not got through it's testing yet according to the owners and tasking for gathering still to come. Digital Globe owns the bird and they feed Google on a contract.

HotAir has a link to a photo of the NK plant and it also shows a smaller square containment structure and a cooling tower.

Circular or spherical containments are more common with conventional nuke plants for certification reasons.

LarryD is correct about the lesser needs of a gas-graphite core.

[Observer]

Check this http://www.isis-online.org/publications/SuspectSite_24October2007 for much better images of the site

It shows the pumping station near the river, which was one of the things I was looking for but did not see.

[Rick]

Observer, that link for the high resolution pictues is already dead.