nuclear-news

“The location is so dangerous,” said Prince Turki Al-Kabeer, the undersecretary for multilateral affairs from the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “Not just to us, but to the world economy!”

Ostensibly, Prince Turki was meeting with the Netherlands ambassador, the Russian ambassador, and a political/military counselor from the American embassy to discuss an initiative against nuclear terrorism. But — according to a classified American embassy cable from 2009 that has since been published by WikiLeaks — the conversation turned to Iran’s nuclear program and the Russian-built reactor at Bushehr, a site less than 300 kilometers (186 miles) from Saudi shores on Iran’s Persian Gulf coast.

Prince Turki went on to say that Russia should “use its influence” to persuade Iran to relocate the reactor to the Caspian Sea, where there would be sufficient water for cooling, and, the cable’s author makes clear, isolation from Saudi territory, if a nuclear accident were to occur.

At risk, according to both Saudi and U.S. officials, are the desalination plants supplying much of Saudi Arabia’s drinking water, and the Persian Gulf waterway that conveys a large portion of the world’s oil exports — 6.6 million barrels per day… http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2011/world/plumbing-wikileaks-saudi-arabia-fears-iranian-nuclear-meltdown-and-potential-terrorism-to-desalination/