A senior official of the Saudi Arabian government announced last Monday that Saudi Arabia is planning on mining and refining uranium domestically as part of the S.A. nuclear power program. Surveys of deposits of uranium in Saudi Arabia indicate that it has about sixty thousand tons of uranium ore.
The development of an internal source of uranium fuel for nuclear reactors is part of the Saudi Arabian plans to become “self-sufficient”. Saudi Arabia has stated that it only wants to use nuclear energy for peaceful power generation. It wants to diversify its energy supply. Construction contracts for two nuclear power reactors will be awarded in 2018.
Hashim bin Abdullah Yamani, is the head of the Saudi government agency tasked with the nuclear plans, the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KACARE). He says that making their own nuclear fuel is reasonable from an economic point of view. He spoke about the Saudi Arabian plans at an international nuclear power conference organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Abu Dhabi.
Yamani told the conference that “Regarding the production of uranium in the kingdom, this is a program which is our first step towards self-sufficiency in producing nuclear fuel. We will utilize the uranium ore that has been proven to be economically efficient.”
Yamani said that Saudi Arabia was working on passing laws for its nuclear power program. They intend to have all the regulations written for its nuclear regulator by September of 2018. He continued that, “The IAEA also has been requested to conduct an integrated review of our nuclear infrastructure during the second quarter of 2018 which will allow the agency to assess efforts to prepare Saudi infrastructure to introduce nuclear power for peaceful purposes.”
Saudi Arabia is discussing the construction of up to seventeen and a half gigawatts of nuclear power capacity by 2032. This would require about seventeen reactors. Such a project would be helpful to a global power industry that has been having serious problems since the Fukushima disaster of March 2011.
Yamani did not say whether or not Saudi Arabia had any plans to enrich or reprocess uranium. Such activities are of concern to the international community because they can be part of a nuclear weapons program. Nuclear fuel contains uranium enriched to around five percent of U-235. The technology that is used to enrich nuclear fuel is what is referred to as “dual use” because it can also be used to enrich uranium to ninety percent U-235 to create nuclear weapons.
The United Arab Emirates will start its first nuclear power reactor in 2018. Their reactor was built by South Korea. They have made a commitment to refrain from enriching uranium itself and not to reprocess any of its spent nuclear fuel.
Saudi Arabia will be the second country in the Middle East to develop a nuclear power program. People in the nuclear power industry have said that Saudi Arabia has been contacting potential vendors from South Korea, China, France, Russia, Japan and the United States for the constructions of its first two reactors. This nuclear power program has received support from Vision 2030 which is an economic reform program started last year by the Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman.
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