| Discussing this story from yesterday, about removing the yellowcake from the Al-Kibar reactor project developed under the Assad regime. |
In this context, materials collected and analyzed by the Alma Center in August 2023 identified “Project 99,” whose operational site is located in the Tell Qartal area, approximately 35 kilometers north of Homs and 18 kilometers south of Hama. During the Assad regime, the project operated under Institute 4000 (“Sector 4”) of the CERS Center—the Syrian body responsible for scientific research and weapons development. Based on the open-source information available to us as of August 2023, the “Project 99” site hosted activities related to the production of ballistic missiles in cooperation with Iranian and North Korean scientists.
It is important to emphasize: At this stage, we do not have information that would allow us to determine that “Site 99,” as mentioned in the Axios report, is the same site in the Tell Qartal area known to us as the “Project 99” site.
According to the report, the Assad regime stored “yellowcake” at the site, uranium concentrate extracted from ore and used as an intermediate material in the nuclear fuel cycle, as well as remnants and other materials left over from the al-Kibar reactor project. The reactor, which was at the center of Syria’s covert nuclear program, was struck and destroyed by Israel in 2007. According to the officials cited, the material at the site cannot, by itself, be used to produce a standard nuclear weapon, but it could serve as a component in a “dirty bomb”—a conventional explosive device designed to disperse radioactive material and contaminate its surroundings.
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