Known Iraqi uranium holdings have been accounted for by the Coalition and the IAEA.

Srive Nebbia nell'editoriale di Ecologia politica 1996b che tra le nuove fonti energetiche il ciclo nucleare è l'unico che consente di ottenere cose commercialmente utili, si tratta di elettricità o di bombe atomiche, per la nostra generazione ad un costo che sarà pagato per decenni o secoli, in futuro da chi non ci ha chiesto nessun parere. Il ciclo nucleare è una prima invenzione tecnica che pone un problema di responsabilità morale estesa nel futuro. 

Known Iraqi uranium holdings have been accounted for by the Coalition and the IAEA. In June 2004, a joint IAEA and Coalition team verified the inventory of Iraqi uranium compounds—an inventory comprising both imported material and that indigenously produced prior to 1991.

• During the 1970s and early 1980s, Iraq bought uranium in various forms from the international market. These materials included about 486 tons of yellowcake, 33,470 kg of “natural” uranium dioxide, 1,767 kg of “low-enriched” uranium dioxide (2.6 percent 235U), and 6,005 kg of “depleted” uranium dioxide from Portugal, Italy, Niger, and Brazil. 

Prior to 1991, Iraq also acquired highly enriched uranium for its research reactors from France and Russia—material that was removed from Iraq following the 1991 Gulf war. Following the Husayn Kamil defection in 1995, Iraq admitted that in 1991 it had intended to use this highly enriched fuel as part of a “crash program” to develop a nuclear weapon (see Table 1).

Table 1  Declared Iraqi International Uranium Purchases
Country	Organization/  Company	Time-frame	Uranium Form	Amount	Comment
Portugal	Emprese National de uranio EP	20 Jun 1980	“Yellowcake”	138.098 tons (uranium content approximately 103 tons)	IAEA notified through “ICR” report (29 Jun 80) (not subject to safeguards according to INFCIRC/153 corrected.)
		17 May 1982	“Yellowcake”	148.348 tons (uranium content approximately 110 tons)	No IAEA notification (not subject to safeguards according to INFCIRC/153 corrected.)
		31 May 1982
		20 Jun 1982
Italy	SNIA-TECHINT through CNEN	12 Dec 1979	“Depleted” uranium dioxide	6,005 kg	Under IAEA safeguards
		12 Dec 1979	“Natural” uranium dioxide	4,006 kg
		12 Dec 1979	“Natural” uranium dioxide(pellets & fuel rods)	500 kg
		18 May 1982	“Low-Enriched” uranium dioxide (2.6% 235U)	1,767 kg
Niger	ONAREM (Office National Des Resources Minieres)	08 Feb 1981	“Yellowcake”	(uranium content 199.9 tons)	IAEA notified (not subject to safeguards according to INFCIRC/153 corrected.)
		18 Mar 1981			No IAEA notification (not subject to safeguards according to INFCIRC/153 corrected.)
Brazil	Through CNEN (Commisao Nacional de Energia Nuclear)	Sep 1981	“Natural” uranium dioxide	7,964 kg	No IAEA notification

Acquiring a Safeguarded Fuel Cycle

Since its inception in the early 1970s, Iraq's nuclear weapons program has depended on deception and determination. Originally, the plan, which one of us (Hamza) authored, was to acquire a complete nuclear fuel cycle able to produce and separate plutonium. The plan focused on the foreign acquisition of complete nuclear facilities with training in their use conducted in the supplier country.

During the 1970s, Iraq concentrated on acquiring nuclear facilities overseas that would have been under IAEA safeguards, since Iraq had signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968. Nonetheless, Iraq reckoned it could defeat the safeguards at these facilities or secretly build undeclared duplicate facilities.

In 1976, Iraq succeeded in buying from France a 40-megawatt materials test reactor called the Tammuz-1 reactor, or Osiraq reactor, that ran on weapons-grade uranium fuel. In 1979, Iraq established a radiochemical laboratory, equipped through a contract with the Italian company SNIA-Techint, suitable for laboratory research on reprocessing. It also acquired a fuel fabrication plant from Italy that was suitable for making natural uranium targets for secret irradiation in the Osiraq reactor.

Iraqi teams calculated that the Osiraq reactor could conservatively produce about 5 kilograms to 7 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium per year. This value could be higher or lower depending on how the targets were arranged in the reactor; it also depended on the frequency of visits by IAEA inspectors and French personnel. The Iraqis believed that the safeguards on the reactor, which would have included periodic inspections and surveillance cameras, could have been defeated. Prior to visits by IAEA inspectors and French personnel, Iraq planned to pull out the unsafeguarded targets. Iraq had also developed plans to defeat the cameras.

Before Iraq could illicitly produce any plutonium and put the IAEA's safeguards to the test, however, Israel bombed the reactor in June 1981, shortly before the reactor was scheduled to go into operation. The radiochemical laboratory and fuel fabrication plant were not bombed. Later, the fabrication facility was used to produce unsafeguarded targets which were irradiated in a Russian-supplied research reactor to produce plutonium. The reactor also irradiated bismuth targets to make polonium-210, a material used in beryllium-polonium neutron initiators which trigger the nuclear explosion. Material from the targets was extracted in the Italian radiochemical laboratory, which was expanded in the early 1980s.