U.S. approves secret nuclear power work for Saudi Arabia

[webfact]

U.S. approves secret nuclear power work for Saudi Arabia

By Timothy Gardner

 

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S. March 20, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry has approved six secret authorisations by companies to sell nuclear power technology and assistance to Saudi Arabia, according to a copy of a document seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

 

The Trump administration has quietly pursued a wider deal on sharing U.S. nuclear power technology with Saudi Arabia, which aims to build at least two nuclear power plants. Several countries including the United States, South Korea and Russia are in competition for that deal, and the winners are expected to be announced later this year by Saudi Arabia.

 

Perry's approvals, known as Part 810 authorisations, allow companies to do preliminary work on nuclear power ahead of the deal, but not ship equipment that would go into a plant, a source with knowledge of the agreements said on condition of anonymity. The approvals were first reported by the Daily Beast.

 

The Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said in the document that the companies had requested that the Trump administration keep the approvals secret. "In this case, each of the companies which received a specific authorization for (Saudi Arabia) have provided us written request that their authorization be withheld from public release," the NNSA said in the document.

 

The NNSA and the Department of Energy did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

 

Many U.S. lawmakers are concerned that sharing nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia could eventually lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told CBS last year that the kingdom would develop nuclear weapons if its rival Iran did. In addition, the kingdom has occasionally pushed back against agreeing to U.S. standards that would block two paths to potentially making fissile material for nuclear weapons clandestinely: enriching uranium and reprocessing spent fuel.

 

Concern in Congress about sharing nuclear technology and knowledge with Saudi Arabia rose after Oct. 2, 2018 when U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The Part 810 authorisations were made after November 2017, but it was not clear from the document whether any of them were made after Khashoggi's killing.

 

Representative Brad Sherman, a Democrat, called on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a congressional hearing on Wednesday to release the names of the companies that got the approvals by the middle of April, and Pompeo said he would look into it. Sherman also said the Trump administration has attempted to evade Congress on sharing nuclear power with the kingdom. Pompeo said the administration was working to ensure any shared technology nuclear power would not present proliferation risks.

 

Last month, Democratic House members alleged in a report that top White House aides ignored warnings they could be breaking the law as they worked with former U.S. officials in a group called IP3 International to advance a multibillion-dollar plan to build nuclear reactors in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia.

 

IP3 did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether it was one of the companies that got a Part 810 authorization.

 

Separately, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has accepted a request by Senators Marco Rubio, a Republican and Bob Menendez, a Democrat, to probe the administration's talks on a nuclear deal with Saudi, a GAO official who spoke on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday.

 

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by James Dalgleish)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-03-28

[Tug]

Donald wants to give nuclear technology to the whabi Muslim the folks who attacked the World Trade Center is Saudi Arabia out of oil so now they need nuclear generators yea right 

[YetAnother]

1 hour ago, webfact said:

"In this case, each of the companies which received a specific authorization for (Saudi Arabia) have provided us written request that their authorization be withheld from public release

business deals in public secrecy, all in the name of oil

[Zeus12345]

So the Jamil kashogi ( spelling ) murder and dismemberment ,was just a minor distraction ,and as we all have seen business as usual is all that matters.

These people don't give a rat's a*#e for the live of anyone as long as there agendas' are pushed through

 

[Emdog]

Insane. Surely there must be laws about exporting nuke tech.

How do Israeli's feel about this? Remember they bombed that Iraqi reactor Saddam was building.

Have they checked wind flow patterns? How far from Mecca they want to do this destabilizing project?

[Sealbash]

business deals in public secrecy, all in the name of oil

I thought the USA produces more oil than KSA? I thought the USA is now a net oil exporter? Why “all in the name of oil”?


Sent from my iPad using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

[Pedrogaz]

The world has gone <deleted> mad. Who on earth would want to risk MbS to having nuclear weapons?

[Galactus]

wow!

Those Saudis blew World Trade Center and directly related with 9/11 attack!

and yet, they receive secrets of atomic bombs. so they can do it again but in a much more mass scale?? what type of politics is this? what about the national security of US?

and those secrets are going to the most backward minded country on earth.

Wahhabi bigots are dangerous. It is like giving a gun to the hands of a monkey on a tradition arab dress!

this will shook the balance in middle east. so then all countries around there have a right to bear atomic bombs including Iran if Saudis also will have them, like Israel.

man, such nonsense double faced politics from Trump US again.

and US citizens, do you feel safe when bigot backward minded countries like Saudi Arabia oppressing its own citizens hold atomic bombs or related secrets??

[Srikcir]

5 hours ago, YetAnother said:

business deals in public secrecy, all in the name of oil

I expect Kushner will get a cut of the "action" on the deal.

• Kushner’s family real estate business had been teetering because of a disastrously overpriced acquisition he made of a particular Manhattan property called 666 Fifth Avenue, but last August a company called Brookfield Asset Management rescued the Kushners by taking a 99-year lease of the troubled property — and paying the whole sum of about $1.1 billion up front. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/opinion/sunday/saudi-arabia-jared-kushner-nuclear.html

So all in the name of family money.

When you have NYC real estate, you don't need oil.

 

 

[bristolboy]

The United States will be giving a psychopath the means to build nuclear weapons? Sounds like US support of Saddam Hussein all over again. Even the same motivation: stop Iran.

[Guest Jerry787]

nuclear power to the mad killer MbS, nuclear war is jsut few steps away

 

 

[rickudon]

So Iran will have no option but to fire up those centrifuges again, so it can be ready for the Saudi bomb ... What insanity from the USA.

[SteveB2]

Decades ago, (from what I was told) a LORAN-C navigation beacon was comissioned in the middle of the  Rub' al Khali desert in KSA. 

 

LORAN-C transnitters can be huge(200m high) and with transmit powers of a mega-watt. 

 

Due to the remote location, and the difficulties of supporting a 3,000hp diesel gen set needed to power the beacon, it was decided to use a small nuclear reactor of a type usualy fitted to submarines to provide the electric power.

 

The remoteness of the site provides its security.

[simple1]

6 hours ago, Sealbash said:

I thought the USA produces more oil than KSA? I thought the USA is now a net oil exporter? Why “all in the name of oil”?


Sent from my iPad using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Does-The-US-Really-Need-Saudi-Oil.html

[from the home of CC]

between this and the actions concerning Taiwan has just raised the chances that we really don't have to worry about a changing climate.. 

[SpaceKadet]

As usual, the propagandists make it that if you have nuclear reactors, you have nuclear weapons. Go and read up what is needed to create nuclear weapon.

 

And what's the big deal about having a nuke? Israelis do, Indians do, Pakistanis do, even DPRK do, and all the world  politicians do is contribute to the global warming....

Soon most will have at least a dirty nuke under their bed for emergencies.

 

And to disappoint you all, nuclear weapons science is well know and in public domain. Technology to produce it might be a tad more difficult to get.

 

[Redline]

Didn’t trumps boys organize this in secret before so they get kickbacks?

[bristolboy]

2 hours ago, SpaceKadet said:

As usual, the propagandists make it that if you have nuclear reactors, you have nuclear weapons. Go and read up what is needed to create nuclear weapon.

 

And what's the big deal about having a nuke? Israelis do, Indians do, Pakistanis do, even DPRK do, and all the world  politicians do is contribute to the global warming....

Soon most will have at least a dirty nuke under their bed for emergencies.

 

And to disappoint you all, nuclear weapons science is well know and in public domain. Technology to produce it might be a tad more difficult to get.

 

First off, the Saudi aren't asking just for reactors tp make electricity. They want the facilities to manufacture nuclear fuel. And Saudi Arabia is now effectively being governed by a genuine psycopath. Someone who nearly went to war with Qatar over next to nothing, who kidnapped the President of Lebanon, and who is engaged in a brutal war of aggression in Yemen. Not a lot of evidence of impulse control there.

[rickudon]

1 hour ago, SpaceKadet said:

As usual, the propagandists make it that if you have nuclear reactors, you have nuclear weapons. Go and read up what is needed to create nuclear weapon.

 

And what's the big deal about having a nuke? Israelis do, Indians do, Pakistanis do, even DPRK do, and all the world  politicians do is contribute to the global warming....

Soon most will have at least a dirty nuke under their bed for emergencies.

 

And to disappoint you all, nuclear weapons science is well know and in public domain. Technology to produce it might be a tad more difficult to get.

 

The main issue is getting the fissile material to make a bomb. You have 2 ways - try separating Ur235 from Ur238 based on minute differences in physical properties (e,g, centrifuges) or by refining spent fuel from a nuclear reactor for Plutonium. The first is incredibly difficult and requires a massive amount of infrastructure, the second is easy - if you do not care about radiation/radioactive waste, because it is simple chemistry. 

 

After that, it is not so hard to make a low yield dirty bomb, A higher yielding bomb is a lot harder.