Khushab - Recent Imagery
Khushab Reactor I
Khushab Reactor & II III
Khushab Reactor IV
Khushab Reactor V
Wikipedia reports "A further reactor has been speculated on (Khushab-V). Space-based surveillance has not turned up signs that work has begun yet on any fifth plutonium reactor at Khushab, although construction of major facilities continues." In January 2015 ISIS highlighted that new construction activity was taking place in the southwest corner of Pakistan’s Khushab nuclear site, south of reactors 2, 3, and 4. At the time, ISIS speculated that the site could be for another reactor.
Indeed, Google Earth imagery discloses a partially complete reactor, with a configuration generally similar to that of Khushab IV, though with a different orientation. Each of the Khushab reactors has a bank of cooling towers of unique configuration. As is well known, reactor thermal power may be estimated based on the size of these cooling towers [John Pike, Tim Brown and Charles Vick were the first open source analysts to apply this principle, in their work on the Israeli Dimona reactor in the late 1990s]. The devil is in the details, but in round numbers of the area of the fifth reactor cooling towers [ about 14 meters by about 90 meters, yielding a surface area of about 1250 meters2] is about the same as that of the fourth reactor [ about 11 meters by about 110 meters, yielding a surface area of about 1150 meters2]. Both are about twice the size of the early reactors [about 500 meters2]. So the power of Khushab V is probably about the same as that of Khushab IV, about 90 megawatts-thermal (MWth).
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
