Al-Monitor Weekly Middle-East Lobby Update: Westinghouse is among five firms in talks to build Saudi Arabia’s first nuclear power plant, with two reactors. The others are France's EDF, Russia's Rosatom, South Korea's KEPCO and China National Nuclear Corp, according to an energy ministry presentation in Riyadh on Wednesday. France’s Assystem was awarded an earlier-phase contract in mid-2018, and Australia’s WorleyParsons is on contract currently.
Saudi Arabia wants to develop a civil nuclear industry and renewable energy to free up oil burned to produce power for export.
Saudi Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman has previously said the kingdom would like to enrich its own uranium resources to produce nuclear energy.
However, outgoing US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry cast doubt last week on the kingdom's ability to process that uranium because of its quality and quantity.
...Kepco won the $20 billion contract to construct the UAE reactors, whose start-up has been delayed.
In Abu Dhabi on 26 October, Us Energy Secretary Rick Perry said the Saudis want to sign a ‘123 Agreement’ with the Us. Under those terms,
Riyadh must sign an accord with Washington committing to the peaceful use of nuclear technology before US companies can compete for its nuclear energy projects in Saudi Arabia.
...Riyadh is reported to have been unwilling to commit to a deal that would rule out the possibility of enriching uranium or reprocessing spent fuel.
...In November 2018, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah City for Atomic & Renewable Energy (KA-Care), the body overseeing the kingdom’s nuclear energy plans, appointed Australia’s WorleyParsons to the project management office consultancy role for the programme…
According to MEED (the former Middle East Economic Digest, “a business intelligence tool for the Middle East and North Africa) in 2018, the KSA assessed two possible sites —Umm Huwayd and Khor Duweihin on the coast near the UAE and Qatar—
following investigations conducted in 2011 and 2012, in accordance with sitting guidance issued by international regulatory agencies, including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
The KSA’s three-part nuclear power development plans involve:
The majority of the nuclear power capacity will be developed through conventional large-scale nuclear facilities, the first of which will be a two-reactor 2.8GW plant…
,,,In addition … the kingdom is also planning ... a series of smaller system-integrated modular advanced reactor technology (Smart) nuclear power plants … in partnership with South Korea.
MEED reported in October last year that progress had been made with the Smart programme, and engineering work for two Smart units will be completed in November.
South Korea and Saudi Arabia have already invested more than SR487m ($129.8m) in plans for Smart nuclear reactors across the kingdom. Riyadh signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with South Korea in November 2016 to develop the technology. The Smart reactors are expected to have a capacity of about 100MW each.
The third pillar of Saudi Arabia’s nuclear energy programme will involve mining uranium resources to fuel the plants, sources close to the kingdom’s nuclear programme have told MEED.
Developing the kingdom’s mining sector is a key pillar of the Saudi Vision 2030 that was launched in April 2016.
The KSA would be the second* Persian Gulf state to start building nuclear plants — Kepco won the $20billion contract for neighboring UAE’s four nuclear reactors to produce 1,400 MW of electricity, although their start-up has been delayed.
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Update: per MB (see comment) this is an error on the part of the source: ”Iran is a Persian Gulf state. It has been running a 1,000-megawatt reactor at Bushehr since 2013 ... right on the coast of the Persian Gulf” making KSA third.