Abstract:
Project Comment: This article contains what is believed to be the first published picture of al-Tuwaitha, the headquarters of Iraq's illicit $10 billion nuclear program. ..... Inspectors from the IAEA have faced "obstruction and deception on a massive scale" in their attempts to investigate the Iraqi nuclear program. The inspectors want to remove fuel rods from the Soviet and French-built reactors at Iraq's al-Tuwaitha plant. The removal of the rods will cost $20 million. Iraq was pursuing three parallel routes to enrich uranium to the concentration needed for nuclear weapons. It had also processed a small amount of plutonium. Al-Tuwaitha's primary focus was the electromagnetic separation of uranium. Using this method, Iraq could have produced enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon within 18 months. Al-Tuwaitha also employed a chemical solvent separation method which has barely passed the experimental stage in the west. Inspectors were surprised to find that Iraq had been using centrifuges to process uranium.