Saudi Arabia Wants Nuclear Reactors. Is That So Wrong?
The problem is not the power reactors. It's the fuel plants they want to build. The same machines that can enrich uranium to low levels for fuel can enrich it to high levels for bombs.
Over the weekend, I did an interview for Alhurra TV about the announcement that Saudi Arabia was considering a bid from China to build nuclear reactors. It was a fairly transparent ploy to put pressure on the United States to loosen its nuclear export controls lest the Saudis cut a deal with a U.S. rival. It illuminates the dangerous dimensions of the Saudi plan.
I do a far amount of interviews for Arab TV, including Al Jazeera, Alhurra TV and Bloomberg’s Asharq News. I enjoy them. I am usually paired with analysts from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel that I otherwise would not be able to meet. I gain a lot from their perspectives.
In this case, the Saudi expert on the show emphasized the Saudi position that this was a purely peaceful, civilian program. He reminded the audience that his country was a member in good standing of the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. He spoke in general terms about how talks with China were part of the normal process of exploring various alternatives. He assured doubters that Saudi Arabia has no interest in building a Bomb.
But doesn’t it?
The Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, noted that “Saudi officials acknowledged that exploring the issue with China was a way of goading the Biden administration to compromise on its non-proliferation requirements.”
Here’s the situation in a nutshell.
The Saudis unveiled a plan in 2013 to build as many as 16 civilian nuclear power reactors. It was part of a surge of interest in nuclear power in the Middle East that began in 2007, spurred by Iran’s pursuit of these technologies. Since then, they have signed a number of agreements with France, South Korea, Russia and China for parts of the program. Nuclear reactor companies are salivating at the prospect of new contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars in a general moribund nuclear market.
But why do Saudi rulers want to go nuclear? It makes little economic sense. Nuclear is the most expensive way to produce electricity, especially since Saudi Arabia sits on an ocean of oil and is ideally suited for much cheaper solar and wind energy production. Still, if they just wanted to waste their money on reactors, it wouldn’t be a problem. But they want more. Much more.
Saudi Arabia wants to build the entire nuclear fuel cycle. They want plants to make the fuel for the reactors, then reprocess the spent fuel rods when they are used up. The same centrifuges that spin uranium gas to enrich it to the low levels required for nuclear fuel can spin it to the high-levels for the cores of nuclear bombs. The same reprocessing plants that can break down used fuel rods for waste disposal can separate out the reactor-produced plutonium in those rods for use in nuclear bombs.
With these plants, Saudi Arabia would have both pathways to the Bomb. The Hiroshima bomb was made of uranium; the Nagasaki bomb, plutonium.
That is why there are strict controls on these fuel-cycle technologies. It is these controls that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wants the US to waive. He is now threatening to go to China if the US doesn’t waive them and allow international companies to build uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing plants in his kingdom.
Most countries with nuclear reactors do not have such plants. They buy their fuel from the half dozen or so countries and consortiums that make it. In fact, giving the enormous construction and operating costs, it doesn’t make any economic sense for a country to produce its own fuel unless it has 20 or more reactors. Saudi Arabia doesn’t yet have one. But it wants an enrichment facility.
This is exactly the issue with Iran. The entire controversy has not been over the construction of an Iranian nuclear power reactor at Bushehr, but about Iran’s enrichment of uranium. It seems obvious that Saudi Arabia wants to match that capability. To become a nuclear-threshold state. To have the capability to make the material for bombs should it decide to do so. Just like Iran.
The Saudis hope that the prospect of huge profits for nuclear contractors or the threat of a major opening for China in the Middle East might compel the US to relent. They want the US to give it a looser deal than the one struck with its neighbor, the United Arab Emirates. There, the US established the “gold standard” for nuclear cooperation. In exchange for access to nuclear technology, the UAE promised that it would never enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium. The UAE now has four power reactors at the Barakah nuclear complex.
But if these incentives are not enough, the Saudis have to other cards to play.
The Biden Administration seems desperate to broker a deal to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. It is not at all clear that such a deal would benefit the people of Israel, Palestine or Saudi Arabia, but under certain conditions it might. The Saudis are insisting that in order to win its approval for this diplomatic breakthrough the US must forgo its insistence on the non-proliferation gold standard.
This ploy may work. The increasingly desperate Netanyahu government in Israel might drop its long-standing opposition to such facilities in the Middle East in order to win a normalization deal that might boost its fortunes at home. Israel would then add it formidable lobbying operations to a push to get the deal through Congress. As part of the effort, the Biden administration might “simply defer the decision on enrichment to a later date,” says Eric Brewer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, even as Israeli officials and US nuclear experts on the right and left warn that allowing these enrichment facilities is just “too dangerous.”
If diplomatic blackmail does not work, there is one final play. Donald Trump could ride to the rescue. While president, Trump sent then-Secretary of Energy Rick Perry to Saudi Arabia to discuss this deal. Trump didn’t seem to care if the deal ushered in a Saudi Bomb. “Can I be honest with you?” Trump said to CNN’s Anderson Cooper in an interview, “It’s going to happen anyway. It’s going to happen anyway. It’s just a matter of time.”
There was strong opposition in the Trump administration from career professionals who understood that allowing Saudi Arabia to build fuel plants would destroy global efforts to restrict these technologies. Other countries from Egypt to South Korea would demand similar treatment. Trump was blocked from pushing the deal through.
But Trump has already pledged that if elected again he would purge from government any whose prime loyalty is not to him but to the laws they oversee and to the Constitution they swear to protect. The barriers would crumble.
As I wrote in 2018 about this prospect:
Forget the corrupt business deals that may bind Saudi Arabia to the Trump administration. Forget the sword dances and the fawning flattery and the millions of Saudi dollars flooding American think tanks and university centers. Forget the complete lack of understanding of the Middle East.
All of that certainly influences the public debate and Trump administration attitudes. But in the end, it may just come down to the president of the United States going against everything his predecessors from Truman to Obama believed, and all their work to stop any nation from getting these weapons, including U.S. allies. It may come down to Donald Trump thinking it is perfectly fine to give Saudi Arabia the atomic bomb.
We must confront these twin threats. We must do everything we can to stop Saudi Arabia - and any other state - from destroying the global barriers to the spread of nuclear weapons. And we have one more reason why we must stop Donald Trump from getting anywhere near the Oval Office.