Al Tarmia

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Al Tarmia or Tarmiyah (Arabic: الطارمية) is a town on the Tigris River, located 50 km (31 mi) north of Baghdad, in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq. It has a population of 91,284. The area is a sparsely populated farming community, with the population primarily consisting of Sunni Muslims from various local tribes, including the Dulaym, Shammar, Al Bu Farraj, and Al Ddury. Tarmiya was the main site for the electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS) program, which aimed to enrich uranium. The site included both 1200 mm and 600 mm separators. Tarmiya was the location of 20 calutrons used to enrich uranium to 35%, situated in two buildings on the site. This large facility was designed to house 90 electromagnetic isotope separators, and eight separators were actually placed in operation in September 1990, resulting in the production of approximately half a kilogram of 4% enriched uranium. The Tarmiya site had no security fence and no visible electrical infrastructure. Only later did inspectors discover that it was powered by a 30-kV underground electrical feed from a 150 MWe substation several kilometers away. Tarmiya was also situated within a large military security zone, thus eliminating the need for additional perimeter security or military defenses at the site. At the same site, the Iraqis constructed a multimillion-dollar “chemical wash” facility for recovering uranium from refurbished calutron components. This facility was reportedly as sophisticated and clean as any in the West, and triple-filtered so as not to release any trace effluents into the atmosphere that might have led to its detection once it began operation. Prior to the first IAEA inspection after the Gulf War, the only known nuclear facilities in Iraq were those at the Al Tuwaitha nuclear center, where nuclear material was being safeguarded. No other facilities were declared in the initial Iraqi...