Oil-Rich Saudi Arabia Is Turning to Nuclear Power

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-20/why-oil-rich-saudi-arabia-is-turning-to-nuclear-power-quicktake?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

by rbanffy • 8 years ago

67 95 8 years ago

bloomberg.com

soniman• 8 years ago

Basically they're going nuclear because Iran is. Saudi Arabia burns about $5B of oil in the summer to fuel air conditioners and it would be easy enough to run a natgas pipeline into the country (most Saudi natgas is used in the petrochemical industry) but Saudi doesn't want to be a fossil fuel importer, too humiliating. None of it makes much sense, to be honest. The entire region is sitting on massive amounts of natgas or solar potential so there is no reason other than prestige or bombs to go nuclear.

newnewpdro• 8 years ago

Bombs. [1]

An acquaintance who works in the oil industry relocated to Saudi Arabia for the express purpose of developing their fracking industry. He said they were burning unrefined crude oil for power generation, and were pivoting to natural gas.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/15/middleeast/saudi-arabia-iran-...

adrianN• 8 years ago

They could just build solar to run their aircons. It's a perfect match.

3pt141592• 8 years ago

Cheaper at scale in the long run too. Short of some unforeseen breakthroughs in non-typical nuclear like thorium.

realusername• 8 years ago

solar potential

If I recall there's too much dust in Saudi Arabia for the solar panels to be any useful (and not enough rain to remove it). Here is some article on the subject: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2013/ph240/alshakhs2/. Nuclear would make more sense there.

Retric• 8 years ago

Dust is a killer for consitrating solar power, but much less so for PV. You can also clean them with minimal water useage. It's just a tradeoff of how much desalination is worth it for efficiency gains.

sametmax• 8 years ago

This is assuming the panel are close to the ground and not mirrors.

rgbrenner• 8 years ago

your link says they can just clean them once a week. that's a solved problem:

http://www.ecoppia.com/technology/

https://us.sunpower.com/blog/2017/12/04/meet-sunpowers-new-s...

or you can use a $100k panel washing truck: https://wash-bots.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/product2.jp...

A $100k expense and a person to drive it around cannot be a reasonable roadblock to solar, when we're talking about 100s of millions of dollars for one solar plant.

beloch• 8 years ago

"In an interview with the U.S. television network CBS aired in mid-March, Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince who effectively runs the country for his father King Salman, said, “Saudi Arabia doesn’t want to own a nuclear bomb. But without a doubt, if Iran develops a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.”

So, this is basically India and Pakistan all over again, only with countries that are a lot more likely to back terrorists.

"The Trump administration, eager to revive the torpid American nuclear industry, is pushing Saudi Arabia to consider U.S. companies -- such as Westinghouse Electric Co. and Exelon Corp. -- for its nuclear contracts instead of competitors from Russia, China and other countries. "

Perhaps this is about money, or perhaps its about stirring the middle eastern pot. Threaten to give the Saudi's all the nuclear tech they want while deliberately ignoring what they do with it and you might just get Iran to end its own nuclear program if only the U.S. will put a stop to this. Or you might get a nuclear conflict.

This is probably going to go down in history as amazingly dumb. Canada is still a little embarrassed about India, but this will be much worse.

north_east_dev• 8 years ago

There's some interesting reading around this that essentially the Saudi's financed Pakistan's nukes in a deal where they can effectively get them under their control in no time should Iran develop one. Contracted out the development in a way :)

sandworm1012• 8 years ago

Iran is part of the problem, but the less-discussed issue remains Isreal's nukes. The race for nukes in the middle east started long ago. The saudis have just decided to start trying.

erric• 8 years ago

Aren’t Israeli nukes an open secret? As in they never acknowledge they have them, but pretty much everyone believes they do?

adventured3• 8 years ago

Your post is pretending that China and Russia do not exist.

There is no scenario where Saudi Arabia doesn't get whatever nuclear power infrastructure they're after. Nothing will prevent that. China isn't going to have any problems building Saudi Arabia's nuclear power infrastructure, they'll be thrilled to do it. The same is true of Russia. There is nothing the US can reasonably do to stop China or Russia from building nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia.

Ok, there's one exceptionally dumb broad option: war with the non-US supplier (eg China or Russia), or fundamentally destroy Saudi Arabia as we know it today and kill millions of people to shut down all industrial progress there to prevent any nation from ever attempting to build nuclear power there.

Here's the reality of the near future: you are going to have to accept a bunch of bad actors are going to have access to various nuclear technology. It's only going to spread faster and faster.

nradov• 8 years ago

More likely than Pakistan to back terrorists? The current likelihood of Pakistan backing terrorists is 100%.

dragonwriter• 8 years ago

Maybe they meant more likely than the average of India and Pakistan.

jlebrech• 8 years ago

Isn't the same as "don't get high off your own supply".

also (fuel) Diversity is good.

sunstone• 8 years ago

The sooner the world moves to renewables and stops pouring money into the volatile Middle East the sooner we can all sleep better.

tedeh• 8 years ago

I would not be so sure that would make the Middle East less volatile though...

gkya• 8 years ago

Not really. Without oil the monarchies would struggle to survive. According to this article Qatar was just a poor city by the sea until oil was found: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/14/magazine/how-a-ransom-...

0xFFC• 8 years ago

As someone from Middle East I totally agree with this. Oil is basically element which finances waging war in Middle East by governments .

lostmsu• 8 years ago

The sooner we get fusion you meant.

r00fus• 8 years ago

Only 20-50 years away.

fnord1232• 8 years ago

Saudi Arabia should absolutely not have access to nuclear technologies.

charlesdm• 8 years ago

The west also shouldn't be exporting billions of dollars worth of weapons to SA, and yet, we do.

If someone can make a buck, someone will do it. And Trump isn't exactly the person to stand up against them.

sunir3• 8 years ago

Or Trudeau. Or anyone.

arethuza• 8 years ago

A bit late for that - they are believed to have provided the finance for the Pakistan nuclear program and the Royal Saudi Strategic Missile Force bought some Chinese missiles with very low accuracy originally designed as a a platform for nukes (being 1km out probably doesn't matter too much if your target is lobbing a nuke at Tehran).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Saudi_Arabi...

cooper12• 8 years ago

You hear this train of thought a lot: "X country shouldn't have nukes". So why do people say a specific country "deserves" nukes while others don't? Why does the U.S. get nukes while it got to invade Iraq under the pretense of it having nukes? You might say everyone who is ideologically aligned with the policeman of the world (the West) deserves it. But in actuality not every country that has gained that capability fits the definition. The simple answer is that it's all about power balance. If you're an ally of the West, you can have all the nukes you want, but if you're not, you must put yourself at their mercy. Note I'm not commenting on SA here, but the whole "we should be able to decide who gets nukes or not". It's very interesting when you consider how U.S. foreign policy has affected the world and the fact that SA is considered an ally.

ams61103• 8 years ago

Yeah pretty much boils down to "good guys" and "bad guys." THe USA and allies are the good guys. From their perspective (and objectively, for the most part, in comparison to the others).

fnord1232• 8 years ago

Ideally, no one should have nuclear weapons but they exist so we're left with asking how to deal with proliferation.

In my opinion, a state run by a Wahhabi theocracy should prevented from getting its hands on nuclear technology. They are an ally only in the sense that they have the deepest oil reserves and use their economic clout to get their way. They are also an ally to the US because they bring some semblance of stability to the ME region.

But KSA funds insurgents intent on destabilising Europe and it's not behaviour of an ally imo.

notyourday2• 8 years ago

That train has left the station loooong time ago. Now any country that can fund educations of grad students in the west and has enough money to buy/extract materials needed to enrich nuclear fuel and has enough money to build such industrial operation is given to have access to nuclear technologies.

The fact that NK managed to do it pretty much makes "not have access to nuclear technologies" a non-starter argument

IAmEveryone3• 8 years ago

Saudis turning to nuclear tells you just as much about the country and technology as Venezuela going for Cryptocurrencies.

Saudi Arabia is an authoritarian dictatorship, is waging a brutal war against one of the world’s poorest countries (and not even winning) and is committing all sorts of crimes against architecture and urban planning with its brutalistic dystopia in the desert. They run air conditioners not just in their cardboard McMansions, but even outside, in the garden FFS.

Iran happens to find itself on the wrong side politically compared to the US. But in almost any category, from education to innovation to even democracy they run circles around those spoiled brats of heredity literally killing themselves on the highways out of sheer boredom.

Proponents of nuclear power should be quite scared to see this compass that reliably points south adopting their pet technology.

VMG• 8 years ago

ok now do France and Japan

IAmEveryone3• 8 years ago

France and Japan have little energy resources and build their nuclear industries from the 60s to the 80s, long before alternatives existed. The French also have far better architects and generally know to set the right priorities in life.

The best counter-example may actually be Iran. But their nuclear industry also started before the recent exponential improvements making solar a viable alternative, and the various trade sanctions likely forced them to forgo the solar suppliers in the west and China, making them dependent on whatever Russia had to offer.

thriftwy2• 8 years ago

On other hand, I always think:

Many poor countries, especially in Africa, complain that their resources are exploited and they get nothing from it.

But that doesn't just happens with (Saudi) Arabs. You just don't try to exploit Arabs. When you try, you're the one who gets in debt prison. So at least they're doing something right.

Just my tangential 2c to your spot-on comment.

IAmEveryone3• 8 years ago

If you look at ressource-rich countries in Africa, you will actually see a somewhat similar structure: Equatorial Guinea, for example, is one of the world’s most expensive places to live and has a large ruling elite syphoning up the spoils of the county’s wealth in oil.

The difference is only the far larger populations of these countries. In that regard, it’s a model comparable to tax havens, in that it doesn’t work once the population grows too large. FWIW, Saudi Arabia also has a large underclass of what are essentially slaves building the country’s tacky infrastructure. But because they are immigrants, Saudi Arabia, as a country, is commonly seen as the perpetrator and not the victim in this scheme.

Edit: thriftwy’s criticism of this theory below is probably right. An index of <revenue from resources>/<population> would be helpful.

ZenoArrow• 8 years ago

"is waging a brutal war against one of the world’s poorest countries (and not even winning)"

I wouldn't say Yemen was exactly "winning" either, the situation over there seems horrendous.

thinkcontext• 8 years ago

Iran is winning. They invest $M's to provide weapons and training, the Saudi's spend $B's on F16s.

OmnipotentEntit3• 8 years ago

Yes, how awful. Another country trying to get off of fossil fuels. How ever will we cope?

In seriousness, how the hell is any of this relevant?

lsaferite• 8 years ago

Well, under the hyperbolic post I see someone saying that Saudi Arabia going after nuclear power should be viewed with great skepticism, and some amount of trepidation, based off their past and present conduct.

baursak5• 8 years ago

When Iran tries to do the same, all hell breaks loose. Media mindlessly and predictably add "weapons" to any mentions of Iranian nuclear program.

Cyph0n4• 8 years ago

I can easily tell which side you're on, but you missed some pertinent information.

Iran is also fighting in Yemen (by proxy) and has been directly supporting the Assad regime, one of the most brutal dictatorships the Middle East has ever seen.

baursak5• 8 years ago

Saudis have been directly supporting Al Qaeda and its off-shoots like Nusra, the guys who cut off people's heads on camera. Oh wait, Saudis actually chop off people's heads regularly themselves. What's your point?

notyourday2• 8 years ago

When two street gangs fight each other to the death for control of a territory, those that are not in that territory are better off staying away, not deciding that one likes a specific gang more and start helping it.

mythrwy3• 8 years ago

Assad isn't even close to "one of the most brutal dictators" the Middle East has ever seen.

That's a ridiculous statement to make and reeks of propaganda.

The Iranians are supporting him though and since our strategic interests are not aligned we get the propaganda.

(Not to suggest Assad isn't somewhat brutal, but there is a history of history of brutality in the area stretching back to the beginning of civilization and Western/Turkish effort in modern times haven't been kindly either so lets don't get all carried away with nonsense.).

fortythirteen4• 8 years ago

Your comment is either born of extreme ignorance, or is deliberate misinformation.

Lambasting SA for fighting in Yemen and then praising Iran, the other country fighting in Yemen, is beyond ridiculous.

Trashing SA for being an authoritarian dictatorship and then praising Iran, another theocratic, authoritarian dictatorship, that is just as happy to have the secret police disappear its citizens, is intellectual malfeasance.

baursak5• 8 years ago

the other country fighting in Yemen

Care to cite any reports of any Iranian bombings of civilians or starving of civilians in Yemen? Or in fact any evidence of Iranian involvement at all (beyond the usual "our confidential Saudi/US sources say")?

Symmetry• 8 years ago

Clearly neither is anything you'd call a liberal democracy but Iran is still a meaningful improvement on Saudi Arabia. In Iran ultimate power is held by the Ayatolla and theocrats but the elected part of the government has substantial power. And censorship, etc, are pretty consistently less encompassing in Iran than in Saudi Arabia.

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/iran

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/saudi-ara...

They're both horrible, oppressive places but if you were forced to move to one Iran would be the clear pick.

kozak• 8 years ago

Where do I read about the outdoor air conditioning? This sounds somewhat viable to me, if we are talking about some semi-enclosed spaces, and there is no wind at all.

sunir3• 8 years ago

Read about it? Just put a stand-alone wall unit outside and sit underneath. Done.

Popular everywhere that is hot, rich and lacks building codes.

Conversely outdoor propane heaters are popular for counties that are cold, rich and lack carbon taxes.

I mean it is an obvious luxurious waste of money which is why people do it. It’s a fine show.

Consultant32452• 8 years ago

Hey, the US sold Saudi Arabia the cluster bombs they're dropping on Yemen [0]. Obama tossed a few missiles their way too [1].

[0] http://www.businessinsider.com/us-to-sell-cluster-bombs-to-s...

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-paul-ryan-letter-missil...

tree_of_item• 8 years ago

literally killing themselves on the highways out of sheer boredom

What does this mean?

whamlastxmas• 8 years ago

They have a reputation of buying expensive cars and driving them recklessly with impunity.

dbcooper• 8 years ago

Looking forward to the apocalypse, sparked by the most responsible Islamic country in the world!

The American Empire is so full of political science geniuses.

adventured3• 8 years ago

You mean of course as opposed to the Chinese or Russians that are alternatively guaranteed to build those nuclear power plants.

Tell me more about this political science genius and how the US controls the entire world and all actions by all nations and at all times, including a superpower like China.

known• 8 years ago

I think every nation should become well "regulated" nuclear power

swarnie_• 8 years ago

I'm seeing lots of negative sentiment in this comments section. Just a question, why do you think you have the right to say who gets nuclear power and who doesn't?

Why can America get Npower and nukes but SA can't?

harshreality• 8 years ago

The Middle Eastern countries have long-simmering tensions, both internationally and internally, and those conflicts do not make possession of nuclear weapons a good idea. Allowing more countries in the Middle East to acquire nuclear weapons is probably strategically bad for the entire world. Therefore, the rest of the world, including the evil hegemonic United States, will use considerable political and economic means to try to prevent that. And military force, if it can be done with reasonable safety, given that it's not just the U.S. that doesn't want new members in the nuclear club, but the entire world, including NATO and the UN.

It's not a matter of "we're better than you, therefore we get nuclear weapons and you don't, ha ha." It's that our political system and domestic behavior, however dysfunctional, is still more stable, and we have some experience holding onto nukes without using them, having muddled our way (luckily) through the Cold War.

friedButter3• 8 years ago

It's that our political system and domestic behavior, however dysfunctional, is still more stable, and we have some experience holding onto nukes without using them, having muddled our way (luckily) through the Cold War

Isnt US the only country to have used multiple nuclear bombs in a real war, but still allowed to keep them?

mynameishere• 8 years ago

See, the thing about international relations is this: All those carrier battle groups, and ballistic missiles, and submarines, and main battle tanks, and commandos, and spy satellites, and long range strategic bombers, etc, etc, constitute a country's "right" to XYZ, where XYZ is anything related to international relations. That's why they are created and maintained.

friedButter3• 8 years ago

Why can America get Npower and nukes but SA can't?

Mostly cause America got Nukes first

soVeryTired2• 8 years ago

Weird headline. Oil is mostly used for transport, not power generation.

adventured3• 8 years ago

That's incorrect as it pertains to Saudi Arabia.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=18111

soVeryTired2• 8 years ago

Wow, TIL. 65% of electricity production is from oil. How incredibly wasteful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Saudi_Arabia#Electri...

Oil-Rich Saudi Arabia Is Turning to Nuclear Power

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