Bombed Syrian Site Appears to Have Been Nuclear Reactor

By GottaLaff

One more as I run out the door:

The Syrian facility bombed by Israeli planes last year bore multiple hallmarks of a nuclear reactor, and the ruined site was contaminated with uranium, U.N. nuclear inspectors confirmed today in a report that largely backed Bush administration accounts of a secret atomic program in the Syrian desert.

The report stopped short of declaring the Syrian facility to be a nuclear reactor, noting that Damascus had taken extensive steps to sanitize the site before officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency were allowed to visit. But agency officials said Syria had failed to provide blueprints or other documents to support its claim that the destroyed building had a non-nuclear purpose. [...]

But more provocative was the IAEA's discovery, during a visit to the site in May, of traces of uranium in soil recovered from the site. A senior U.N. official, describing the finding, said the soil samples contained "significant" amounts of uranium in a form that clearly suggested human manipulation. The uranium was not enriched but had been "chemically processed," official said.

Yikes.