said it is training more specialists to decommission the facility , but acknowledged the cleanup could take decades . `` We have 18 facilities in Tuwaitha , '' said Fuad al Musawi , Iraq 's deputy science and technology minister . `` We have another 10 facilities around the country . So you can imagine how long it will take . '' Iraq 's nuclear ambitions date back to the 1960s , when it obtained a Soviet-built research reactor . It built another , French-designed reactor in the 1970s . Israel 's concerns about the program led to the 1981 raid , in which Israeli pilots flew across then-hostile Jordan and a corner of Saudi Arabia to strike the facility . Despite the damage inflicted by that attack , Iraq began attempting to produce enriched uranium -- a step toward producing a nuclear weapon -- during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s , the U.S.-led Iraq Survey Group reported in 2004 . It accelerated that program after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait left it facing an international military coalition that ultimately drove out the Iraqi forces . The bombardment that accompanied the 1991 war inflicted extensive damage to the Tuwaitha
Tuwaitha , Iraq -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- The shell of former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein 's efforts to produce a nuclear bomb is being slowly dismantled along the banks of the Tigris River , but its radioactive legacy lingers on . The Tuwaitha research complex , about 18 kilometers -LRB- 11 miles -RRB- southeast of Baghdad , was bombed by Israel in its 1981 airstrike on Iraq 's Tammuz 1 research reactor . It was bombed again during the Persian Gulf War of 1991 , and it was looted extensively after the 2003 U.S. invasion that ousted Hussein . Now , engineers and technicians are working to dismantle the laboratories and equipment at the site , but the extensive contamination left behind complicates their work . `` It is difficult because of the destruction , '' said Anwar Ahmed , the project manager at Tuwaitha . `` This facility was bombed in 1991 . Now , finally the decision was made to decommission all the destroyed facilities . '' Workers and visitors have to wear protective suits and masks around the facility , where about 20 people are at work so far . Iraq 's ministry of Science and Technology