Our lovely French have nothing to do with Saddam nuclear program but wonder why Chiraq is with Saddam at Iraq's nuclear facility
chez.com
If Iraq has the bomb it is thanks to France
One of the nuclear installations provided by France to Iraq started in secrecy in 1987, whereas everyone believed it cold or destroyed. Is this with the assistance of France?...
It is in any case France with the first head, then Italy and finally Germany, which worked since 1975 the Iraqi nuclear power. In spite of the American raids, it remains with Iraq what to make at least a bomb A of the Nagasaki type. Was Iraq well about to have the atomic bomb? Did the advance of its nuclear program influence the release of the current conflict?
And why several French politicians did multiply, right before the ultimatum of last 15 January, of the declarations underestimating the nuclear potential of Iraq? Would this be that certain smell themselves some responsible? Because if Iraq had the nuclear weapon or were in good way to acquire it, two countries helped it considerably: France and Italy. And others relayed them.
The nuclear ambition of Iraq is old. One can go back the origin with the interview from it to Jacques Chirac, then Prime Minister, with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in September 1974. The goal of maintenance was the purchase of a nuclear engine in France.
The Iraqis did not have whereas a small engine of research of 5 MW thermal, Irt-5000, provided by the Soviets and who functions since 1967 (at that time, it reached only 2 MW).
Iraq, which seemed to have some problems to obtain Soviets the higher model, quite naturally turned to France, which received it with open arms.
At the time, competition was sharp between the Germans, the Italians, the Canadians and the French, who sought all to put their engines, highly practical machines intended to produce honest electricity or to be used as toys for physicists in evil of experiments.
However, these merchants did not hesitate, when the need was felt some, to praise the capacity of these marvellous machines required plutonium.
And not any: that of military quality, whose only destination is the manufacture of the nuclear weapon. The French do not ensure any less than the Iraqis only seek to develop a civil nuclear program.
Iraq being rich in oil, this nuclear ambition can only surprise. Nevertheless, the negotiations continue. Saddam Hussein comes to Paris in official visit, in September 1975; it will be its single voyage in Europe.
One benefits from it to take it along to Cadarache, in order to present various engines of research to him. An free-Iraqi agreement is signed on November 18, 1975. The model of engine chosen at that time is of graphite-gas type, die which made it possible to General de Gaulle to build the French deterrent force; because they are producing plutonium engines par excellence.
Mr. Chirac agrees to provide this engine, of a power of 1500 MW thermal. But the project fails:
EDF meanwhile had just given up this die, of which there remain only two engines in exploitation in France (in Bugey and Saint-Laurent-des-Eaux), with the profit of the pressurized water reactors, under Westinghouse licence, which make today the near total of our nuclear thermal power stations.
To go back to the old die, for the Framatome manufacturer, would hardly have been profitable.
However, one year later, August 26, 1976, Iraq signs a contract of more than one billion francs, bearing on the construction of an engine of search for 70 MWth, twenty times less powerful than that which one had given up.
Osirak, such is its name, is the certified copy of the Osiris engine which functions still today in the nuclear center of Saclay, in the Essonne.
Actually, Osiris, just like Osirak. consist of two engines which are piles twin with light water, known as "piles swimming pool", and whose hearts bathe in the water of a swimming pool instead of being locked up in a steel tank as it is the case for the engines of EDF.
It is claimed that among twins, there is always one of them more extremely than the other. It is the case here. The first pile, which is called Osiris, and gave thus its name to the whole of the engine, has a power of 70 MW HT and is used for the study of the behavior, under irradiation with very high flow of neutrons, of structural materials of nuclear thermal power stations. This engine of Osiris thus fits completely in the logic of development of a civil nuclear program. |
