“In the late 1980s, we put together the most efficient covert nuclear program the world has ever seen.”
Saddam, the bomb and me
Mahdi Obeidi NYT
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
The U.S. Department of Commerce licensed more than $1.5 billion worth of sensitive U.S. exports to Iraq from 1985 to 1990./1 Most were “dual-use” items, capable of making nuclear weapons or long-range missiles if diverted from their claimed civilian purposes.
On March 11, 1991, the Commerce Department released a list of those licenses. The list showed the equipment approved, the date, the value, the buyer in Iraq and the claimed Iraqi end use. This report is an analysis of the list. It shows, beyond any doubt, that U.S. export controls suffered a massive breakdown in the period preceding the Gulf War. When U.S. planes were sent to destroy Iraq’s strategic sites, much of the equipment they bombed was made in the United States.
Licensing Mass Destruction: U.S. Exports to Iraq: 1985-1990
“In about three years, we gained the ability to enrich uranium and nearly become a nuclear threat; we built an effective centrifuge from scratch, even though we started with no knowledge of centrifuge technology. Had Saddam ordered it and the world looked the other way, we might have shaved months if not years off our previous efforts.”
Saddam, the bomb and me
Mahdi Obeidi NYT
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
On December 16 the London Sunday Times claimed that Iraq had a cascade operating at Tuwaitha the location of Iraq’s known nuclear facilities, which are inspected by the IAEA. Stemmler called this assertion ridiculous. He said that developing a cascade would be “far, far more difficult” than balancing a rotor in a single centrifuge. Iraq would need large quantities of uranium hexafluoride, computerized control equipment to maintain precise pressures and temperatures throughout the cascade, autoclaves for inserting uranium hexafluoride into the cascade, and desublimers for withdrawing it. Although Stemmler thought that Iraq would have little trouble obtaining a power supply (frequency inverter) for a single rotor assembly, getting the power supply for an entire cascade would prove “extraordinarily difficult.”
A Western enrichment expert said that the biggest obstacle to operating a cascade is developing equipment that will run for years without failing. “Infant mortality,” the crashing of a centrifuge during startup, is a major problem that must be addressed in the development stage, since the failure of one centrifuge can cause the entire cascade to fail. The expert said that Iraq would probably concentrate on building one reliable centrifuge, then test and prove a cascade of 10 centrifuges before moving on to cascades of 100-150 machines.
The Sunday Times also claimed that Iraq was mass-producing centrifuge components at a facility code-named Factory 10, located northwest of Baghdad. Stemmler and a colleague, Walter Busse, visited the factory in 1988. Both said that they saw no evidence that Iraq was manufacturing centrifuge components at the facility, although Stemmler said he saw what might have been a single outer casing of a centrifuge.
How long?
To gauge the amount of time Iraq might have needed to build a pilot enrichment plant, it is useful to consider Brazil’s unsafeguarded enrichment program, which has benefitted from a more sophisticated industrial and nuclear infrastructure than Iraq’s. Brazil decided to develop centrifuges in the late 1970s and still has not reached its goal of 1,000 operating centrifuges. In September 1982, Brazil succeeded in producing slightly enriched uranium in its own centrifuges. In 1984 it operated its first cascade of nine machines. In 1988 Brazil inaugurated a new gas centrifuge enrichment plant at Ipero, in the state of Sao Paulo, with 50-100 machines.
Brazil now plans to expand the Ipero plant to about 1,000 machines, each with a capacity of about two separative work units per year. About 1,600 people, including about 800 engineers, are working on the enrichment program at lpero and an experimental center on the campus of Sao Paulo University. About 40 Brazilian companies are under direct contract to the enrichment program, working on steel, alloys, welding, vacuum technology, and synthetic materials. Another 160 companies are indirectly linked to the program.
After all this effort, and assuming it operates 1,000 machines, Brazil would still need about two to three years to produce enough weapongrade uranium for one crude nuclear explosive. It seems safe to assume that what has taken Brazil over a decade would have taken Iraq at least that long.
Meantime, Iraq’s “nuclear sites” were prime targets in the early raids by U.S. and allied warplanes. But the effect of air attack on the Iraqi weapons program, such as it was, is highly questionable. The research reactors at Tuwaitha, which may have been destroyed, were unconnected to the bomb program. The highly enriched uranium fuel left over from the Osiraq reactor, or not yet irradiated in the IRT-5000, could easily have been moved before war broke out—as could any key pieces of laboratory equipment. Nuclear scientists and engineers have presumably stayed out of harm’s way. The war may put a damper on any future program by damaging Iraq’s industrial capacity, but the nuclear effort was at such an early stage that there was little to destroy. If Iraq is determined to pursue nuclear weapons after the war, outside help will still be the key to its success.
Iraq and the bomb: Were they even close?
By David Albright and Mark Hibbs
Iraq planned an ambitious research and development effort for its centrifuges. From mid 1987 to late 1989, Iraqi scientists conducted trials on a “model 1” centrifuge. It was an early Beams-type gas centrifuge using oil bearings, which ran into difficulties with vibration. It also consumed large amounts of power. Then from mid-1988 to mid-1991, Iraq ran trials on a “model 2” centrifuge. This was a Zippe-type centrifuge using magnetic bearings and a maraging steel rotor spinning at sub-critical speeds, for which the design drawings were provided by an ex-employee of the German firm MAN Technologie AG. Also during this period, another German national, Karl-Heinz Schaab, provided the design of a sub-critical centrifuge featuring a carbon fiber composite rotor. Schaab also furnished a quantity of sample rotors, which Iraq exploited successfully by achieving an output of 1.9 kg SW/year in 1990. Iraq also obtained 25 pieces of maraging steel from an unidentified source, 19 of which it machined into centrifuge preforms at Nasser Engineering Establishment while six more were machined by an unidentified foreign company.
Iraq planned to construct (with the help of foreign companies) a centrifuge plant at Al Furat between late 1989 and mid-1991. Trial operation was scheduled for the second half of 1991. Iraq also planned to design and construct a 100-centrifuge cascade at Al Furat between 1991 and mid-1993, when Iraq hoped to begin active operation. In addition, Iraq planned to design and construct a 500-centrifuge cascade from mid 1992 to mid-1995. The centrifuges and pipework for this latter cascade would be installed in 1995, and operation would start in early 1996.
The fourth International Atomic Energy Agency inspection team estimated that 1,600 to 2,000 Iraqi-designed maraging steel centrifuges in cascade could produce about 25 kg/yr of HEU. The team also found that Iraqi plans for the program “would most probably have been achieved once the capability to flow-turn and weld maraging steel had been acquired.” This quantity of HEU would have been enough for about 1.5 bombs per year.
WMD Profiles: Nuclear
Iraq’s Nuclear Weapon Program
Iraq Watch
The exporter was a German company, exporting from the United States. The company, whose name the Commerce Department refused to disclose, first came to the attention of German officials in early 1984, when German intelligence reported that the company was suspected of selling Pakistan equipment for making nuclear weapon fuel. In May 1987, the firm was cited in news reports, this time for trying to smuggle blueprints for uranium enrichment to Pakistan through Switzerland. To make matters worse, another German firm, Uranit, was suing this company for stealing the blueprints. According to a German official, the evidence against the company was “very incriminating.”/2 The company was also suspected of hiring a Swiss firm to produce special equipment for Pakistan that could enrich uranium to nuclear weapon grade. The press reports appeared only six months before the company applied for its two U.S. export licenses on December 1 and 22, 1987.
Despite the exporter’s notoriety, the Commerce and Energy Departments took only two months to approve the first application (case B281441) and less than a month to approve the second (case B286904). Neither was referred to the State or Defense Departments for review.
The importer was the “Nesser Establishment for Mechanical Industries,” also known as the “Nassr State Enterprise for Mechanical Industries.” One of Nassr’s main jobs was to procure equipment for Project 1728, devoted to increasing the range of Iraq’s SCUD missiles. Nassr was part of the Iraqi Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization (MIMI), run by Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law Hussein Kamil al-Majid. MIMI was generally in charge of Iraq’s missile and chemical weapon efforts. Nassr also served as the procurement arm for Taji, a site used to produce chemical munitions and, according to Western intelligence documents, “responsible for the development and manufacture of gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment.”/3 In addition, Nassr ran artillery ammunition plants, purchased “high-capacity driving nozzles” for missiles from a German company,/4 and was linked to the Condor II intermediate-range missile project.
Thus the Commerce Department approved sensitive U.S. equipment that would go directly to Iraqi nuclear weapon, chemical weapon, and missile sites, despite the fact that the exporter was suspected of nuclear smuggling, and despite the fact that the importer declared an intention to work on rocket bodies. Commerce knew that the exporter was unreliable, and knew that the end use was improper, but approved the export anyway.
This equipment may well have helped build the SCUD missile that killed American troops in Dhahran. The buyer represented the SCUD program, the equipment was used to rework rocket casings, and Iraq used a long-range SCUD with a reworked casing to reach the U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.
Licensing Mass Destruction
U.S. Exports to Iraq: 1985-1990
by Gary Milhollin
June 1991
Mahdi might consider applying directly to Dr. A.Q. Khan instead.