Note: There are no known nuclear power reactors in Iraq; the following is a planned reactor that was never built.

Name: Underground nuclear reactor
Other Names: IAEC Reactor
Address/Location: NNW of Baghdad, Salah Al-Din province, 25km north of Samarra
Subordinate to: n/a
Primary Function: Plutonium production

Description:
SAAD-13 Establishment was constructed between mid-1980 and the end of 1984 by a French firm, under a turn-key contract. SAAD-13 Establishment was designated as a possible site of an underground plutonium production reactor, and the IAEC reactor siting work was carried out in three phases beginning in the late 1970s. The first phase entailed identification of a site for a nuclear power plant in an area North of Samarra and lasted until 1981. In 1981 after the bombing of the Osiraq reactor, Iraq began examining the possibility of building the reactor underground, and underground siting, constituting phase two, lasted from 1982 to mid-1983. A number of foreign firms involved in assessing the site selection and technical parameters concluded that the costs for running an underground facility would be prohibitive and underground siting would not provide the necessary protection to the facility as Iraq had hoped, which led to the decision to abandon underground siting in 1983. Phase three involved qualification of an above-ground site for a nuclear power plant and a 40-70MW materials test reactor.[1]

Key Sources:
[1] Report on the Tenth IAEA On-Site Inspection in Iraq under Security Council Resolution 687, UN Doc S/23644, 26 February 1992, <http://www.iaea.or.at/worldatom/Programmes/ActionTeam/reports/
S_23644.pdf>.

	Updated December 2003