Many experts have expressed concern about the terms of a US-Saudi nuclear cooperation agreement now apparently under negotiation. Some despair at the very idea of transferring such sensitive technology to a regime known to have been involved in the gruesome murder of a prominent US-based journalist and to have led a bloody war in Yemen.
Saudi Arabia has attempted to justify its nuclear power program as a way to shift its electrical system away from fossil fuels, in part because of climate change concerns and in part because it is economically useful for the Kingdom to sell its oil and gas on the international market, rather than use them to generate electricity.
But for sun-baked Saudi Arabia, the economical and obvious switch is to solar energy, which also doesn’t result in carbon emissions and can be used to reduce domestic consumption of oil and gas. The limited efforts in installing solar power capacity on the part of the Saudi government suggest that climate action and economics may not be the driving motivations for its extensive nuclear energy plan. Indeed, members of the Saudi regime have, on other occasions, made it clear that their interests in nuclear energy derive from the idea that it would help them acquire the capability to make nuclear weapons and match Iran, whose regional status is seen to have risen as a result of its uranium enrichment program, even though it is now apparently limited by the Iran nuclear deal.
The contrast between Saudi Arabia’s solar potential and its focus on nuclear power raises a question: Why is the Trump administration so eager to provide nuclear technology to such a questionable partner? We offer some tentative answers to this question and argue that it would be best for the United States to stop trying to sell nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia, and to use its considerable diplomatic capacity to encourage other countries to do the same.
Outside inducement, inside interest. Despite President Trump’s outspoken interest in maintaining a close relationship with the Saudi leadership, the White House is not seeking a Saudi nuclear agreement entirely on its own volition. It is also responding to a major lobbying effort. In February, representatives from several nuclear energy firms, including NuScale, TerraPower, Westinghouse, and General Electric, met with President Trump reportedly with the aim of having the president “highlight the role US nuclear developers can play in providing power to other countries.”
The motivation for nuclear reactor suppliers is understandable. Thanks in part to the multibillion-dollar cost of reactors, the nuclear energy market is slim. One can literally count the number of new reactor construction projects starting each year since 2010 on the fingers of one hand. Westinghouse, the leading company among those that lobbied Trump, has not signed a new reactor contact in more than a decade. The Middle East has been an especially competitive market for companies interested in building reactors in the Kingdom. If any reactors are sold, it will only be with the help of high-level support, probably involving national governments or even heads of state.
But the effort to sell US nuclear power plants has also garnered some new players: companies involving ex-members of the armed forces. For about two years now, there have been reports of former national security advisor Michael Flynn playing an important role in trying to start nuclear exports to the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia. More recently, a host of articles have uncovered the role of the newly established IP3 Corporation (derived from International Peace, Power, and Prosperity), a company dominated by a number of retired military officials. The extent of IP3’s lobbying became apparent only after the House Oversight Committee report was published.
The influence trail is murky, and the various conflicts of interest within the Trump administration render the picture even murkier. One example is the case of Westinghouse and Jared Kushner, son in law of and senior advisor to President Donald Trump and a close friend of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Westinghouse is the largest nuclear reactor supplier in the United States, but, thanks to cost escalations in multiple projects involving its AP1000 nuclear reactor design, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2017. It was then purchased by the Canadian company Brookfield Business Partners. Brookfield Business Partners is a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management Inc., which reached a deal in August 2018 with the Kushner family’s real estate company to lease a highly unprofitable building in New York. The Kushner company had purchased 666 Fifth Avenue in New York for $1.8 billion in 2007, just before the property markets collapsed. The company had been trying for years to offload this debt. Brookfield’s deal might be just a coincidence, but the timing and the earlier foray into the nuclear business raise obvious conflict of interest questions……….
Three reasons to question. Three aspects of the proposed sale of nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia demand attention. The first, which has received much media attention, involves the opaque tangle of shady talks and negotiations between the Trump administration and the Kingdom, in the realm of nuclear energy and in other areas. Second, it is clear that nuclear energy makes little economic sense for Saudi Arabia, suggesting that there are other motives for its nuclear power program. Third, one of these motives need no longer be the subject of speculation: Saudi Arabia’s leaders have clearly stated their interest in potentially developing nuclear weapons. The acquisition of nuclear power and associated technology could well aid that process.
Given these questions, neither the United States nor any other country should be exporting nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia. This will not just be in the interest of the United States, but also in the economic interest of the Saudis. To the extent that there is concern that other countries like Russia and China might step in and sell nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia, the obvious corollary is that the United States should use its considerable diplomatic capacity to discourage such efforts. Success is, of course, not guaranteed, but not trying is the surest way to fail. https://thebulletin.org/2019/04/the-trump-administration-is-eager-to-sell-nuclear-reactors-to-saudi-arabia-but-why/
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