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IN TRUMP’S NUCLEAR DREAMS  

In an article by NPR it outlined the current (May, 2020) efforts by Saudi Arabia to harness the atom for peaceful purposes?  The last I heard from Forbes that the proven reserves are at 270 billion barrels and reported production was 100 billion barrels from 1990-2017 for 27 years.  At that rate Saudi Arabia has less than 100 years of proven reserves.

In preparation for a potential IPO, Saudi’s national oil company, Saudi Aramco, recently commissioned an outside audit of its proved reserves. The independent external audit found Saudi’s proved oil reserves to be at least 270 billion barrels.

In the beginning of the Trump presidency Westinghouse Electric nuclear division was busy in Saudi Arabia attempting to sell nuclear technology to the Saudi government.  The Saudi’s spreading the oil wealth went for a small program initially.

“On the outskirts of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is building what it sees as the future of its energy production. At the King Abdelaziz City for Science and Technology, the Saudi government is constructing a small nuclear research reactor. The Argentine-designed reactor will produce just tens of kilowatts of energy, a tiny fraction of what Saudi Arabia needs. But it’s a sign of things to come — the kingdom’s plans include gigawatts of energy from nuclear plants for both electricity and desalination. 

Saudi Arabia’s plans appear, on paper, to be entirely peaceful. But some arms control experts are concerned that its nuclear energy ambitions may also be part of its ongoing rivalry with Iran, which already possesses dual-use technology that could aid in the production of a nuclear bomb.  The U.S. and others such as South Korea and China are pushing ahead with plans to help Saudi Arabia’s civilian nuclear program.

“The big, big question in the background,” says Sharon Squassoni,a nuclear expert and professor at George Washington University, “is do we have enough controls in place that we can trust [Saudi Arabia]? Since they’ve been pretty clear about their intentions should things go bad with Iran.”

What are the nuclear goals of Saudi Arabia?  Since the Trump administration has had a friendship with the Saudi’s from the beginning with his first trip outside the U.S. visiting the Kingdom. Trump has made it an effort to woo the Crown Prince to sell anything especially technology to the Kingdom for jobs, jobs, jobs.  Below outline some of these ambitious projects using nuclear technology as bait.”

 

SAUDI ARABIA’S CONTROVERSIAL QUEST FOR NUCLEAR POWER, EXPLAINED 

Why the world’s most iconic oil giant wants to go nuclear — and why it could transform the Middle East.

By Zeeshan Aleem Mar 26, 2018, 1:10pm EDT VOX news

“Saudi Arabia is in talks with the Trump administration over a nuclear cooperation deal. But lawmakers are concerned that Riyadh could use nuclear tech to pursue weapons. 

Sitting atop the world’s second-largest oil reserves, Saudi Arabia has little to worry about when it comes to generating energy. The Gulf nation is now angling to make one of the biggest investments in nuclear energy the world has seen. Saudi Arabia plans to spend more than $80 billion to build 16 nuclear reactors over the next quarter century. 

The power play shows that the world’s most iconic oil giant is serious about reducing its near-total reliance on oil — and it’s also raising questions about whether the country intends to seek out nuclear weapons in the future.

Saudi Arabia says it’s looking to expand its energy portfolio. If it uses nuclear reactors to generate electricity, that will allow the Gulf country to export more of its oil rather than consume it at home. More exports mean more money for the country’s government. 

Energy experts say that Saudi Arabia is trying to make money from its oil reservesas quickly as possible because global demand is expected to decline in the future, with breakthroughs in renewable energy technology and the eventual ubiquity of electric cars. In the long run, it’s aiming to diversify its economy away from oil to generate revenue from sectors like tech and entertainment services.

Currently, Riyadh is in talks with firms from more than 10 countries about buying nuclear technology to build its first two reactors — and American firms are top candidates. But before any US sale, the Trump administration needs to strike a nuclear cooperation pact, known as a “123 agreement,” with Saudi Arabia. In those agreements, countries make promises about how they will and won’t use the powerful nuclear equipment they could buy from the US in the future.

Talks between the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia about such a deal are already underway — US Energy Secretary Rick Perry met with Saudi officials in London earlier this month to discuss the matter, and President Trump almost certainly discussed it during his meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last week. [March 2018]

Nuclear proliferation experts and US lawmakers from both parties are deeply worried about the deal. They’re concerned that Riyadh could try to use the technology to start a nuclear weapons program and make one of most volatile regions in the world even more unstable. In fact, some skeptics think the whole energy argument coming out of Riyadh is merely a cover for its military ambitions.

It’s more than just a hunch. In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes on March 18, the Saudi crown prince, widely known as MBS, openly admitted it was a possibility: “Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but without a doubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.”

The Trump administration can try to ensure that never happens. In the 123 agreement, it can get the Saudis to make a legally binding pledge that they won’t pursue uranium enrichment or spent fuel reprocessing down the road — the activities that would allow it to build nuclear weapons.

But the Trump administration is reportedly considering allowing Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium in current negotiations. Experts say there are two main reasons the president may do this.

First, Trump has demonstrated an unusual soft spot for Saudi Arabia: It was the first country he visited on his first trip abroad as president, and he has backed some of Saudi Arabia’s most radical policies, like its isolation campaign against Qatar last summer and its destructive military intervention in Yemen.

Second, Trump might be distracted by the prize of winning multibillion-dollar contracts for US nuclear construction companies in desperate need of business. The temptation to settle for a deal that gives the Saudis a path to the bomb might just be too great to overcome.

Saudi says it wants nuclear power for energy purposes. That may not be the whole story.

Saudi Arabia has generally described its ambitions for a civil nuclear energy program as a way to increase energy production and said it doesn’t want to use the program to build weapons.

“Not only are we not interested in any way to diverting nuclear technology to military use, we are very active in non-proliferation by others,” Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said at a joint press conference with Secretary Perry in December.

Energy experts say that it certainly makes sense for Saudi Arabia to look into new ways to generate energy so that it can export more of its oil before the value of oil plunges in the future. But they also say that it’s strange that the country is focusing so much on nuclear, rather than renewable, energy.  Joe Romm, a former assistant secretary of the Department of Energy during the Clinton years, told me that Saudi Arabia is an outstanding candidate for using solar energy to power much of the country. Its vast and extremely sunny deserts are naturally suited to providing electricity to the country during the day. 

Given that Saudi Arabia can build solar power facilities and produce solar energy at incredibly low costs, Romm says, it “doesn’t make a lot of sense from an energy point of view” that Saudi is leaning so much toward the nuclear option, which is notoriously expensive. 

Comparing Saudi Arabia’s plans to invest in renewable energy versus its planned investments in nuclear energy, Romm estimated that Riyadh would be trying to generate at least three times more electricity from nuclear reactors than from renewable energy. And American foreign policy and nuclear nonproliferation experts generally think that the motive behind emphasizing one program over the other is obvious: building weapons. 

“I think a main driver, if not the main driver [of Saudi Arabia’s nuclear program], is its security competition with Iran,” Kingston Reif, a nonproliferation expert at the Arms Control Association, told me. Iran is Saudi Arabia’s archrival in the Middle East, and Saudi Arabia is worried that Iran could use its civil nuclear program to make weapons in the future, and tip the balance of power in the region in its favor. The nuclear deal that Iran signed on to in 2015 heavily restricts Iran’s ability to make the materials required for a nuclear bomb, but crucial restrictions in the agreement begin to expire around 2030. 

And the restrictions could vanish far more quickly than that: Trump has repeatedly threatened to withdraw from the nuclear deal, and Iran could respond to a withdrawal by taking steps toward weapons production in a matter of days. [note; this article was written in 2018, prior to Trump’s total withdrawal from the agreement]

Since MBS has openly admitted that Saudi Arabia would feel compelled to chase after a bomb if Iran did, it’s clear that it must see a civil nuclear program as a potential military asset.  Can Trump actually make a strong deal with the Saudis?

The Trump administration is currently in ongoing talks with the Saudis about a nuclear cooperation agreement, and it probably came up when the crown prince met with Trump at the White House on March 20. (Neither Saudi Arabia nor the US’s official readouts of the meeting explicitly mention the nuclear cooperation agreement, but both allude to “new commercial deals.”)

Recent reports suggest that the White House may allow Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium as part of the arrangement. A country can enrich uranium to produce fuel for its nuclear reactors, but that same process can also be used to make an atomic bomb — and that has US lawmakers on both sides of the aisle very concerned.

“The Crown Prince’s interview just last week is reason enough to have the administration pump the breaks on the negotiations and insist that there will be no 123 agreement that includes enriching and reprocessing,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Unfortunately, from the little we do know from the administration, it is looking at this deal in terms of economics and commerce, and national security implications only register as a minor issue, if at all,” she said.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has told the administration that there’s bipartisan opposition in Congress to a 123 agreement that allows for enrichment. The White House has to submit the agreement to Congress for review, and lawmakers have the option to pass a joint resolution of disapproval to block it. 

But if that were to happen, it could ultimately backfire: The Saudis might turn to Russian or Chinese bidders for nuclear tech if they’re rebuffed by the US. And analysts say the Russians and Chinese are less likely to be stringent about restricting Saudi Arabia’s enrichment or reprocessing ambitions. For that reason, some analysts argue that Washington might have to consider a compromise with Riyadh.

“I would prefer to have America’s nuclear industry in Saudi Arabia than to have Russian or China’s, so I think it’s useful that we’re reengaging with the Saudis. We should try to get the best restraints on enrichment and reprocessing, including a ban for some significant length of time, say 20 or 25 years,” Robert Einhorn, a former State Department adviser for nonproliferation and arms control, told the Washington Post. “We should show some flexibility.” 

Saudi Arabia considers the ability to enrich uranium its “sovereign” right, and it wasn’t able to settle on a 123 agreement with the Obama administration precisely because President Obama refused to grant them that capacity.

Alexandra Bell, an Obama-era State Department arms control expert, told me that the Saudis won’t budge “without high-level pressure from the White House.” That means sustained pressure from people like the president himself or top officials like Energy Secretary Perry are key to extracting any kind of concession on enrichment from Saudi Arabia. 

But Trump might not be all that interested in staying focused on that goal. He looks at the issue through a different lens than his predecessor — the prospect of boosting American business could eclipse security concerns for him. Last year, when Trump struck his enormous $110 billion arms deal with the Saudis, he was eager to sell it to the public as a way to create “jobs, jobs, jobs” for the US.

In this case, a deal to build nuclear tech with the Saudis would provide a boost to struggling US nuclear construction companies. Westinghouse, the most prominent US bidder, is currently going through bankruptcy proceedings and has shed thousands of US jobs because of it.  When the Saudis negotiate with the Trump administration in the coming weeks, they’ll probably consider Trump’s eagerness to claim another job-creating deal to be a source of leverage.

Right now, Saudi Arabia generates its electricity with fossil fuels. But the government predicts that oil will be more valuable as an export. So about a decade ago, Saudi Arabia began pursuing an ambitious plan to start a nuclear energy program. Even after the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, Squassoni says, Saudi Arabia kept at it.

“Most countries were walking away from nuclear, but they decided, ‘Look, this is our long-term plan,'” she says.

Squassoni says she’s a bit flummoxed by Saudi Arabia’s continued interest in nuclear, given its high cost and the ease with which the country could adopt renewable energy sources like solar.

But the interest may make a lot more sense, she says, when considering Saudi Arabia’s rivalry with Iran. Iran’s nuclear program has had military dimensions in the past, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Today, Iran remains in possession of thousands of centrifuges that can be used to enrich uranium. Depending on the level of enrichment, that uranium can be used either as fuel for nuclear reactors — or to make the cores of nuclear bombs.

Since 2015, the IAEA has closely monitored Iran’s centrifuges as part of an international agreement that freezes Tehran’s enrichment program in exchange for sanctions relief. But Iran’s nuclear capabilities clearly make Saudi Arabia nervous. Speaking last year on CBS’ 60 Minutes, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman warned that if Iran ever got a nuke, Saudi Arabia would too. “Without a doubt if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible,” he said.

Saudi officials say the new research reactor under construction outside of Riyadh has nothing to do with nuclear bombs. In a statement to Bloomberg News last month, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources said the reactor’s purpose was “strictly peaceful.”  “The project is fully in compliance with the IAEA and international framework governing the nuclear energy and its peaceful use,” the statement said.”

Since March of this year the talks have stalled due to the pandemic.  A 123 agreement with Saudi Arabia has not yet been reached according to export.gov.  With very low oil prices and very low consumption rates for fossil fuels, the Saudi government may be rethinking a renewable path?  It’s cheaper and has far fewer problems, just ask SDG&E.  SDG&E waisted a billion dollars on a reactor core that failed and the SDG&E engineers were held responsible, or should I say the rate payers.  This along with problems in de-commissioning the reactor and indefinite storage of waste by-products makes the nuclear energy problem riddled and potentially extremely dangerous and potentially toxic to the environment.

Now you know why Trump exited the Iran nuclear agreement.  This so he could sell nuclear technology to the Saudi’s, after all with Trump exiting the agreement, Trump was anxious to see if Iran would take the bait and again gallop toward a nuclear weapon.  With Iran’s actions Trump thought he could show an Westinghouse 80 billion contract with the Saudis as a milestone deal to provide jobs.  This is why he went to Saudi Arabia first, to sell weapons and nuclear power.

 The Crown prince said he would only pursue nuclear energy if the Iranians had attempted to build a bomb.  What did Trump do with that information?  He weaponized it by pulling out of the Iran agreement on his own.  Other countries did not and Iran continued honoring the agreement and Trump has been furious since.  Without the Iranians breaking the agreement does he loose leverage with the Saudis to sell dirty and expensive energy solely for the purpose of generating electricity?  The Europeans seem to hold-on to the agreement as long as Iran complies, which they have to Trump’s dismay.

Could these facts be the rationale for Trump to ask the United Nations to punish Iran last week (Aug, 2020) for not taking the bait?  It becomes obvious Trump is not interested in nuclear proliferation, or security in the Middle East, he is interested in hawking wares as a snake oil salesman creating the need.  The Saudis have been teasing companies for the last 4 years for this effort.  The Saudis settled for a wait and see attitude with starting out with the small research reactor currently being built.  Trump’s exit of the Iran agreement was as dumb, we now are alone putting pressure on Tehran.  World isolationism creates unnecessary security problems.