Israel, U.S. to share nuclear safety research

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States has agreed to boost nuclear safety cooperation with Israel, an Israeli official said on Monday, despite the Jewish state's refusal to sign a nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

An agreement, signed about two weeks ago between the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), gives Israel additional access to research in nuclear safety, said Nili Lifshitz, an IAEC spokeswoman.

The decision to increase cooperation does not stem from concerns about the safety of Israel's nuclear reactor at Dimona, built with French help in the 1960s, as reported by Israeli media, Lifshitz said.

The NRC, which regulates commercial nuclear power plants and other uses of nuclear materials in the United States, said on the agreement: "The NRC shares safety-related information as broadly as possible. The NRC has amended its agreement in this case according to the State Department's guidance on sharing information with Israel."

Israel is widely believed to have assembled the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal at Dimona, a plant out of bounds to foreign inspection. It maintains a small nuclear research reactor open to inspection at Nahal Soreq, south of Tel Aviv.

"Until now, the Atomic Energy Commission only had access to information from the NRC that was in the public domain. Now Israel will be able to see 93 percent of the NRC's research in nuclear safety," Lifshitz said.

As part of a policy of "strategic ambiguity" over the nuclear issue, Israel has neither confirmed or denied having atomic weapons, saying only it will not be the first country to introduce them to the Middle East.

Non-nuclear signatories to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty agree to neither develop nor acquire such weapons while being monitored by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.

Lifshitz said the Atomic Energy Commission will be able to learn and compare technologies with the U.S. agency and even send its scientists to courses offered in the United States.

(Writing by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Matthew Jones)