ABU DHABI: Saudi Arabia wants to enrich uranium in the future to boost its planned nuclear energy program, said its energy minister on Monday, a sensitive step that could complicate the involvement of US companies in the plan.
The world's leading oil exporter has said that he wants to use metal to diversify his energy mix, but uranium enrichment also opens up the possibility of military uses of the material, the central issue of Western and regional concerns about Iran's atomic work.
"We are proceeding with caution … we are experimenting with two nuclear reactors," said Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, referring to a plan to tender the first two nuclear power reactors in the Persian Gulf state.
The Saudi energy minister said at an energy conference in Abu Dhabi that, ultimately, the kingdom wanted to move forward with the full cycle of the nuclear program, including the production and enrichment of uranium as fuel.
The tender is expected by 2020, with US, Russian, South Korean, Chinese and French companies involved in preliminary talks about the billionaire project.
But the issue of uranium enrichment has been a point of conflict with Washington, especially after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said last year that the kingdom would develop nuclear weapons if done by regional rival Iran.
Saudi Arabia has backed President Donald Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran after he withdrew the United States from a 2015 nuclear pact that halted Iran's disputed nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
In order for US companies to compete for the Saudi Arabia project, Riyadh would normally need to sign an agreement on the peaceful use of nuclear technology with Washington, under the Atomic Energy Law of the United States.
Saudi authorities have said they would not sign an agreement that would deprive the kingdom of the possibility of enriching uranium or reprocessing spent fuel in the future, both potential roads for a bomb. The Saudi energy minister said the cuts in oil production would benefit all exporting nations, in an indication that he will support further reductions to address a market with excess supply and fallen prices.
In his first comments since he was appointed by his father King Salman on Sunday, Prince Abdulaziz did not point out any major changes in the approach in Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) that pumps around of a third of the oil of the cartel.
"The pillars of our oil policy are predetermined and will not change," he told Saudi broadcaster Al-Arabiya.
The prince was in Abu Dhabi to attend the World Energy Congress, followed by a meeting on Thursday of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) of the Opec + alliance for a supply cut agreement reached last year.
Posted in Dawn, September 10, 2019
Source: https://www.dawn.com/news/1504507/saudi-arabia-wants-to-enrich-uranium-for-nuclear-power-says-minister