DIMONA Nuclear fuel depot: Once described as a "textile factory," the Dimona Center actually produces about 40 kilograms of weapons grade plutonium every year and has been doing so for 10 and possibly 20 years. The entire facility is protected by U.S. anti-aircraft defenses. Dimona is located 8.5 miles from the town of the same name and only 25 miles from the Jordanian border, between Beersheba and Sodom. Given that about four kilograms of weapons grade plutonium are used in each nuclear weapon, Israel has produced enough plutonium at Dimona to construct between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons. It has also produced about 170 kilograms of Lithium-6, which would produce about 220 kilograms of lithium-6 deuteride. Roughly 6 kilograms are needed to construct a thermo-nuclear weapon. Israel could, therefore, have as many as 35 thermo-nuclear weapons. Structure: Once described as a "textiles factory" by David Ben-Gurion, Dimona is made up of separate blocks. Currently, there are nine of these blocks, called machons. Machons 1, 2, 8 and 9 are directly involved in producing materials for nuclear or thermo-nuclear weapons; the others provide services for these four. The reactor: Machon 1, the domed structure is the reactor built by France. Machon 2 is the reprocessing plant which removes the plutonium produced in the reactor. It also contains an operation that separates the isotope lithium-6 from natural lithium for ultimate use in thermonuclear weapons. This is the key facility and the primary target in any raid on the center. Without it, there is no nuclear weapons development. Of the 2,700 employees at Dimona, only 150 are permitted access to Machon 2, which extends six floors underground. The centrifuge: Machon 8 contains a gas centifuge for the production of enriched uranium, an alternative fissile material, by an advanced laser enrichment process. And Machon 9 contains a laser isotope separation facility which can be used to enrich uranium and to increase the proportion of isotope plutonium-239 in plutonium, helping Israeli nuclear weapons scientists get more bang for their buck. The facility's reactor is now 35 years old and thus reaching the end of its practical lifetime.