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This handout satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies and taken on February 15, 2025 shows the Arak heavy-water research reactor on the outskirts of the Iranian village of Khondab, south of Tehran. Israel pounded Iran in a series of air raids on June 13, striking 100 targets including Tehran's nuclear and military sites, and killing the armed forces' chief of staff, the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and top nuclear scientists. Photo by Maxar Technologies /AFP via Getty Images
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Israel’s military warned people Thursday to evacuate the area around Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor.
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The Arak heavy water reactor is 250 km southwest of Tehran.
Heavy water helps cool nuclear reactors, but it produces plutonium as a byproduct that can potentially be used in nuclear weapons. That would provide Iran another path to the bomb beyond enriched uranium, should it choose to pursue the weapon.
Iran had agreed under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers to redesign the facility to relieve proliferation concerns.
In 2019, Iran started up the heavy water reactor’s secondary circuit, which at the time did not violate Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
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Britain at the time was helping Iran redesign the Arak reactor to limit the amount of plutonium it produces, stepping in for the U.S., which had withdrawn from the project after President Donald Trump’s decision in 2018 to unilaterally withdraw America from the nuclear deal.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, has been urging Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear sites. IAEA inspectors reportedly last visited Arak on May 14.
Due to restrictions Iran imposed on inspectors, the IAEA has said it lost “continuity of knowledge” about Iran’s heavy water production — meaning it could not absolutely verify Tehran’s production and stockpile.
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