For the first time, a court ordered that figures pertaining to radiation damage claims in the millions of shekels be disclosed.
In an extraordinary step yesterday, the Tel Aviv District Court ordered the Dimona nuclear reactor to disclose documents pertaining to five damage claims against the reactor. If the reactor does not claim immunity, important documents and figures, including the radioactive material used by the reactor and the radiation it emits, will be revealed for the first time. This information has hitherto been considered secret.
This decision and the documents likely to be revealed by it will be binding on dozens of cases in which the state is being sued for bodily harm suffered by former reactor employees, who claim they became ill or died as a result of their exposure to ionizing radiation, radioactive materials, and various chemicals.
The state can claim immunity and avoid disclosing the information, but concealing the information is in the claimants' favor. The five cases affected by the decision represent claims worth tens of millions of shekels.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on January 17, 2002