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United Arab Emirates could spark off nuclear arms race

UAE Joins The Nuclear Club. Who’s Next? Energy Tribune  Dec. 30, 2009 By Andres Cala This week, the United Arab Emirates awarded a $20 billion contract to South Korea’s state power company to build four 1,400 megawatt nuclear reactors by 2020.The UAE’s will be the first Arab country with nuclear power.

Its transparency and non-proliferation safeguards have been hailed as a model by Western countries, including the US, in stark contrast of Iranian efforts. Namely, it has pledged to forego nuclear enrichment.The question remains though how other Arab states will react and, more importantly, under what conditions.At the very least, few doubt other Middle Eastern countries, like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria, will also pursue their own nuclear power programs, but some worry an arms race –with Israel and Iran in the backdrop- will follow………..

Several countries in the past have secretly used technology from their power generation programs to develop nuclear weapons, such as India, North Korea and Israel, and even some Western countries. France and the UK began with a peaceful nuclear energy program and then secretly developed their weapons.

Israel has been operating a reactor at Dimona since the early 1960s and the Israeli military has an unknown number of nuclear weapons. But the best examples of countries trying to obtain nuclear weapons are Iran and North Korea, which also signed onto non-proliferation agreements.

Despite the oversight, they still managed to covertly develop their enrichment activities, in the latter’s case with nuclear bombs included.

So if history is a reference, it seems unavoidable, even if not in the short term, that the Middle East will enter a nuclear weapons race. The uncertainty, of course, is how it will end.

Energy Tribune- UAE Joins The Nuclear Club. Who’s Next?

December 31, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | MIDDLE EAST, weapons and war | antinuclear, AREVA, nuclear, nuclear weapons