Saudi Energy Minister has confirmed on several occasions that Saudi Arabia has large quantities of uranium
Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, Saudi Energy Minister, said his countries will start using locally sourced uranium to build their nuclear forces.
He added that a recent discovery has demonstrated the presence of different types of uranium within Saudi lands.
Saudi Arabia is running an emerging nuclear program that it aims to expand through uranium enrichment, which is a sensitive sector due to its importance in the production of nuclear weapons.
Riyadh has said it wants to use nuclear energy to diversify the energy sources on which the country depends. However, it is not possible to predict where Saudi nuclear ambition might end up. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in 2018 that his country would develop nuclear weapons if its traditional rival for influence in the Middle East, Iran, did.
The Saudi energy minister said, “The kingdom seeks to exploit its domestic uranium resources in a number of ways, including entering into joint ventures with ready partners in accordance with international commitments and transparency standards.”
He added, speaking at a mining industry conference, that Saudi Arabia’s plans regarding domestic uranium will include “the entire nuclear fuel production cycle that contains yellow cake (uranium used in nuclear fuel production). , low enriched uranium, and the production of nuclear fuel for domestic consumption and also for export, of course.” .
Interestingly, the UAE has the first multi-unit nuclear power plant in the Arab region. The UAE has announced its commitment not to enrich uranium and not to reprocess spent fuel itself.
Nuclear reactors must enrich uranium to 5.00% purity, but this same technology can be used to enrich this heavy metal to higher purity levels that can reach the levels required to manufacture nuclear weapons.
This issue was and still is of concern to the West and the Middle East region over the Iranian agenda, which led to the conclusion of the historic nuclear deal with Tehran in 2015. This deal stipulated that the purity of the uranium enrichment should not exceed 3.67 percent, which guarantees that nuclear weapons will not be developed in Iran.
However, the US withdrew from this deal under former US President Donald Trump in 2018. Efforts to revive the historic deal have also stalled since last September.
The Oversight and Reform Committee within the US House of Representatives (Congress) has released a report on the Saudi nuclear energy program, speaking of former US President Donald Trump’s intention to allow US companies to supply sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.
The report, released in 2019, hinted at the possibility of a deal between Washington and Riyadh, under which Saudi Arabia would be granted the nuclear weapons it wants as part of the comprehensive peace plan.
