Osiraq
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Osiraq was a 40 MW light water nuclear materials testing reactor (MTR). It was constructed by the Iraqi government at the Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Centre, 18 km south-east of Baghdad in 1977.
The MTR was a French design of a type named Osiris, named after the Egyptian God of the dead. The French named the reactor Osiraq, from "Osiris" + "Iraq" (French Osirak), and the Iraqis named it Tammuz 1, for the Arabic month the Ba‘ath Party took control of the government in 1968.
As well as the reactor, construction, and technical assistance, the French sold around 12.5 kg of 93% enriched uranium-235 fuel (HEU) to the Iraqi government.
Many believed the reactor was part of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program. The Iraqi government had tried and failed in 1974 to buy a French gas-graphite plutonium producing reactor and a reprocessing plant, and they had also failed in an attempt to buy an Italian Cirene reactor. France agreed to sell them the MTR and its associated laboratory equipment.
The Israeli government was deeply concerned at this purchase. Despite Iraqi claims that the plant was for peaceful use, it was an unusual choice — An MTR design is useful for countries with established nuclear reactor construction programs, but less so otherwise. The reactor used HEU fuel as standard. The substantial Iraqi purchases of uranium ore could be treated at the plant to produce plutonium, and the Iraq government had also purchased a fuel fabrication plant and a recovery 'hot cell'. Further, Iraq being one of the world's leading oil and natural gas suppliers made the notion of a peaceful energy plant even more unlikely.
However, the plant was under IAEA supervision and was regularly inspected, and there were also French technicians in constant attendance. The supply of HEU as fuel was carefully staggered, and used fuel had to be returned to France, making a diversion of fuel into a weapons program obvious and therefore unlikely; any noticed diversion would have meant an immediate end to further supplies. Similarly, the clandestine irradiation of uranium could not have taken place undetected; the repeated, slow, and costly changing of uranium rods would have been obvious.
Although most agreed that Iraq was years away from being able to build a nuclear weapon, the Iranians and the Israelis felt any raid must occur well before nuclear fuel was loaded to prevent nuclear fallout. Further, Israel's Menachem Begin, feared that Israel's next elected government would not act until a nuclear weapon was created.
The Iranian attack on the site on September 30, 1980 had little success. After Israeli intelligence agencies confirmed to Menachem Begin its intent in producing weapons, Begin then authorized an Israeli strike to take place. Flying from Etzion air base on June 7, 1981, an IAF strike force flew 1,100 km (683.5 mi) across Jordan, Saudi Arabia and into Iraq to bomb the target. Arriving at around 17:30, the reactor site was quickly destroyed. The strike force evaded detection by flying so close to each other on the long journey that, instead of appearing as a squadron of small fighters on radar, they appeared as a single large jet, and not much attention was given to them. One of the Israeli pilots on the mission was Ilan Ramon, who would later become Israel's first astronaut and die in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster on February 1, 2003.
The loss of the reactor was a serious blow to the Iraqi nuclear program. France finally declined to assist in the reconstruction of the reactor in 1984 after initially agreeing to provide technical help. The Iraqi nuclear weapons program was forced to turn to less efficient uranium enrichment processes such as electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).
The site was closed and held under IAEA supervision. The Iraqi government made efforts to recover components from the site from September, 1990. But during the Gulf War, after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the nuclear program was put into high gear in order to create a weapon by using radioactive fuel. The site was then targeted by Coalition forces on January 17, 1991, halting the weapons program. Three days into the Desert Storm air raids, 56 F-16s attacked the facility followed by F-117 raids three days later. The facility, one of Iraq's most fortified targets, was not fully destroyed until another raid, 48 F-117s targeted the facility 7 more times for over a month as well as 17 F-111Fs weeks later. Only 19 days into the strikes did the US Defense Intelligence Agency, find the site to be "severely degraded".
External links
- Osiraq / Tammuz I 33°12'30"N 44°31'30"E, Federation of American Scientists
- Iraq, Israel and the United Nations, Double standards, The Economist (UK)
- Israel's Air Strike Against The Osiraq Reactor: A Retrospective (Adobe PDF), Temple International and Comparative Law Journal
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