23 Mar (NucNet): Saudi Arabia has international partners it can work with if the US walks away from a potential deal on nuclear power technology over concerns about nuclear proliferation, Khalid al-Falih, the kingdom’s energy minister, said on 22 March 2018.
“If the US is not with us, they will lose the opportunity to influence the programme in a positive way,” Mr Falih said after he met President Donald Trump and energy secretary Rick Perry.
The Trump administration has been negotiating a so-called Section 123 agreement with Saudi Arabia that would allow the kingdom to buy nuclear reactors from US companies.
Saudi Arabia has indicated it wants a deal without the usual “gold standard” of prohibitions on enrichment and reprocessing that are essential steps in producing nuclear weapons.
The kingdom is also in talks with companies from Russia, China, South Korea and other countries about plans to build two reactors.
Saudi Arabia has said it needs nuclear power to move away from burning crude oil to generate electricity and to diversify its economy. Earlier this month, its cabinet approved a national policy programme that limits nuclear activities to peaceful purposes.
Mr Perry defended the Trump administration’s negotiations with Saudi Arabia concerning a nuclear energy programme, saying that while a deal needs to have nonproliferation standards, the US also needs to be able to compete with Russia and China.
“I like to remind people that our choices at this particular point in time, it appears to me, either Russia or China is going to be a partner in building civil nuclear capability in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, or the United States,” Perry told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Mr Perry hopes Saudi Arabia will buy nuclear power technology from US companies, including Westinghouse, which went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2017 and abandoned plans to build two advanced AP1000 reactors at the Summer nuclear site in South Carolina.
But Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman raised concerns when he told CBS in an interview that the kingdom will develop nuclear weapons if Iran does so.
