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Home – Oil & Energy News – US-Saudi 123 Agreement Is Good for Energy Security, Nonproliferation, and Nuclear Safety

US-Saudi 123 Agreement Is Good for Energy Security, Nonproliferation, and Nuclear Safety

Jack Spencer | Jacob Twyford

Like nearly every other country on Earth, Saudi Arabia is facing massive electricity demand growth. One estimate projects that the kingdom’s power demand will grow at least 27% by 2030 from 2023 levels. Similarly, like many other countries, it is looking to secure nuclear energy to help meet that demand.

Saudi Arabia has never built a nuclear power plant. This presents two major challenges. First, it doesn’t have the industrial base to build or support a commercial nuclear industry. Second, Saudi Arabia is still developing the institutional structures necessary to oversee the industry, and that bureaucracy is still evolving. That means that it will need to rely on foreign help to both build reactors and to establish the necessary rules under which they operate, and there are only a few nations that have the experience and technological know-how to do both. Two such nations are Russia and China, and both are working hard to become Saudi Arabia’s nuclear partner.

That is a problem because whoever builds the first power plants in Saudi Arabia will heavily influence the rules under which the facilities are built and regulated as well as the standards, procedures, and operational norms that determine how the program is managed over time.

Regardless of rhetoric about safety and nonproliferation, Saudi Arabia’s partner will help define the culture in which the kingdom’s nuclear program evolves. That culture will determine the program’s long-term success, and neither Russia nor China would do as good a job instilling a culture that prioritizes safety and nonproliferation as the U.S. would.

That is why the........

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