After Natanz: Why the IDF won’t strike Iran’s live reactor at Bushehr
A strike on a live nuclear reactor could unleash radioactive leakage capable of endangering civilian populations hundreds of kilometers away, depending on the severity of the breach.
The international community’s anxieties over Israel’s overnight attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure have little to do with Tehran’s lost enrichment capacity—an outcome many capitals would quietly welcome—and everything to do with collateral risk.
A strike on a live nuclear reactor could unleash radioactive leakage capable of endangering civilian populations hundreds of kilometers away, depending on the severity of the breach.
Memories of Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011), the world's two worst nuclear reactor accidents, still loom large: each higher-profile disaster killed between 45 and 50 people and are have caused or are expected to cause thousands of cancer deaths, while rendering wide tracts uninhabitable.
The International Atomic Energy Agency reported on Friday that Israel did not hit the Bushehr reactor, which supplies Iran’s grid and could—given the right reprocessing setup—also yield plutonium for a bomb.
Instead, fighter jets targeted the enrichment complex at Natanz, inflicting heavy damage but leaving radiation and chemical readings “unchanged,” according to IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi.
Why enrichment sites are a different story
In both previous instances where Israel destroyed enemy reactors—Osirak outside Baghdad in 1981 and Syria’s al-Kibar facility in 2007—the Israel Air Force struck before concrete shielding was complete and before any sustained fission reaction had begun. By contrast, an enrichment plant such as Natanz contains no active core; instead, thousands of centrifuges spin uranium hexafluoride gas to raise the concentration of fissile U-235.Natural uranium ore contains less than 1% U-235. Fuel-grade enrichment levels hover around 4–5%. Weapons-grade material must reach roughly 90%. For this reason, the IAEA imposes tight monitoring once the 20% threshold is crossed. Damaging centrifuges can release low-level radiation and industrial chemicals that threaten technicians onsite, but it does not trigger a nuclear explosion or wide-area contamination.
“Spinning gas in centrifuges raises enrichment through physics alone,” explained Dr. Eyal Pinko, a former IDF Navy intelligence officer and now a researcher at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center. “Inside a reactor, enrichment rises through a self-sustaining chain reaction. Hitting a reactor risks uncontrolled fission and, under certain conditions, even a nuclear yield. A reactor is therefore a far more environmentally sensitive target.”
Bushehr, Pinko noted, lies barely 20 kilometers from the United Arab Emirates’ coastline, amplifying regional concern over any misfire.
Natanz: a familiar battleground
Natanz has been in Israel’s sights before. In 2011, the Stuxnet computer worm—attributed to US-Israeli cooperation—corrupted Siemens controllers and destroyed nearly a thousand centrifuges. An explosion in 2020, which Tehran blamed on cyber-sabotage, and a crippling power outage in 2021 likewise slowed operations. Friday’s raid appears to have struck both enrichment halls and auxiliary power systems.Iran still maintains a dozen-plus nuclear-weapons-related sites, Pinko said, from reactors to enrichment facilities to warhead-development workshops. The underground complex at Fordow is buried deep enough that even if its centrifuges were wrecked, “environmental fallout would remain localized,” he added.
For now, the IAEA says it detects no radioactive or chemical anomalies around Natanz, and Bushehr remains untouched. Yet diplomats and energy markets alike remain jumpy: a direct hit on a hot reactor would instantly globalize the crisis.
How Iran chooses to respond—and whether Israel feels compelled to revisit Bushehr—will determine whether those global fears stay theoretical or become the next nuclear-age cautionary tale.
