Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center

The facility is surrounded by a sand berm four miles (6.4 km) around and 160 feet (50 m) high, and contained the French-built research reactor Osirak, destroyed by Israel in 1981.

The neutrons released by nuclear fission are donated, producing Pu-239 and is the cheapest and easiest way to achieve large-scale production of plutonium.

The first was a highly orchestrated event requiring industrial machinery in which large pieces of shielding from the destroyed reactors was stolen.

At most 10 kg of uranium was lost in what could easily be explained as minor contamination by a few grams of dust per vessel of the more than 200 containers stolen.

Although the Iraqi government was able to smuggle some steel and carbon-fiber centrifuge units into the country, they needed at least a thousand to process industrial quantities.

Without wide availability of extremely high precision instrumentation and production facilities, the task was impossible under anti-proliferation embargoes.