"To try to avoid the economic and social challenges posed by growing resource constraints, countries around the world have raced to find alternatives. Among the options they have chosen is one that will almost certainly have unwelcome and unintended consequences. Without meaning to, they have heightened the risks in a world already destined to become more dangerous and violent."
--Chapter 2, "Tides, Torrents, and Tsunamis," When Giants Fall
Fear can trigger a powerful urge to run with the herd. Whether one is talking about investors fleeing a falling market or a throng throwing itself from a burning building, people can easily lose themselves when danger is in the air.
Such feelings can also motivate the leaders of nations, especially when their fears stem from a combination of threats. More than likely, that explains the suddenly popular rush to go nuclear amid worries over energy security and national defense.
In "Arab States Race for Nuclear Power," UPI reports on the scramble taking place in one especially volatile region of the world.
Amid the gathering storm over Iran's controversial nuclear ambitions, the race is on among Arab states to build nuclear power plants of their own, opening up immense trade opportunities for the industrialized world as well as the specter of proliferation.
The United States, Britain, France and Russia are competing for contracts in the nuclear energy bonanza that is emerging in the Middle East as Arab states seek to generate more power to feed their growing economies and to build desalination plants, a vital element in development plans as water resources shrink.
Saudi Arabia's minister of water and electricity, Abdullah bin Andul-Rahman al-Hussein, told the kingdom's al-Watan newspaper in late August that Riyadh was working on plans for its first nuclear plant.
Saudi Arabia and the neighboring United Arab Emirates signed preliminary agreements with the United States for nuclear technology in 2008.
In May, France's economy minister, Christine Lagarde, said Paris was close to finalizing a nuclear energy cooperation agreement with the United Arab Emirates. In 2007, France also pledged to help Morocco, a former colony, and Qatar, another of the Gulf states, to develop their nuclear programs.
The U.A.E. is the furthest along among the six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council -- which also includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain -- although Riyadh's plans are accelerating.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited the U.A.E. in May to open France's first military base in the Gulf -- and to promote a French consortium's bid to secure a $40 billion deal to build at least four, and possibly six, reactors.
The French consortium, which includes Areva, GdF Suez and Total, is the front-runner for the winner-takes-all contract.
Other bidders are General Electric of the United States with Hitachi of Japan, and the Korea Electric Power Corp. with Hyundai Engineering and Samsung C&T Corp.
The Gulf states are all major oil producers, Saudi Arabia is the world's leading exporter, and the U.A.E. is the third-ranked producer.
But they, and their fellow Arabs, are finding that their economic development is outstripping their power generation capabilities, hence the focus on nuclear energy.
In Egypt, energy demand is growing by 7 percent a year. Even the oil-rich Gulf states are suffering power cuts these days.
The U.A.E. hopes to have its first nuclear plant online by 2015, although industry sources say that may be way too optimistic. It takes on average eight years -- and $4 billion -- to construct a reactor plant.
Two years ago, there was little interest in nuclear energy around the Arab world. But now that's all changed -- to a large degree because of what's happening in Iran.
Apart from the six Gulf states, Tunisia, Libya, Jordan, Egypt and even impoverished Yemen are also committed to pursuing nuclear energy programs.
"The rules have changes," King Abdullah II of Jordan recently told Israeli daily Haaretz. "Everybody's going for nuclear programs."
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a deal in 2008 that cleared the way for Russian involvement in building four nuclear power plants in the Arab world's most populous nation. The first, on the Mediterranean coast, is expected to cost $1.5 billion.
In August, Putin approved a draft plan for Russia, which is building Iran's first plant at Bushehr on the northern Gulf coast despite U.S. objections, to cooperate with Turkey to develop a nuclear power facility near its Mediterranean coast.
The Middle Eastern states say they do not seek to acquire nuclear weapons, as the Americans and their allies say Iran does.
But the United States and Israel, the only regional state to have nuclear arms, fear that some Arab states will eventually seek to develop uranium enrichment programs to counter Iran's allegedly clandestine efforts.
Egypt, Libya and Algeria were all suspected proliferation risks, with the help of China, Argentina, North Korea and others, at various times up until five years ago.
Israeli warplanes bombed a suspected nuclear reactor built by North Korea in Syria in September 2007.
The U.S. Congress has expressed considerable disquiet about Washington helping the U.A.E. because the emirates are key trading partners with Iran. The fear is that U.S.-supplied technology and knowhow could find its way across the Gulf to the Islamic Republic.
"Iranian Atomic Work Nears Bomb Capability, U.S. Says" Bloomberg
Iran’s nuclear work is approaching a “dangerous and destabilizing” point at which the Persian Gulf country could build a bomb, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency said.
“Iran is now either very near or in possession already of sufficient low-enriched uranium to produce one nuclear weapon, if the decision were made to further enrich it to weapons grade,” Ambassador Glyn Davies said today in a statement prepared for the IAEA’s 35-member board of governors, which is meeting for a third day in Vienna.
This “moves Iran closer to a dangerous and destabilizing possible breakout capacity,” Davies added, in some of the strongest comments yet used by a U.S. official about the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program. He repeated President Barack Obama’s overtures to Iran for direct negotiations and said the administration in Washington is committed to a negotiated resolution to the international dispute over Iran’s work.
Iran, holder of the world’s No. 2 oil and natural gas reserves, is under three sets of UN Security Council sanctions for refusing to halt uranium enrichment, a process to isolate an isotope needed to generate fuel for a nuclear power reactor or, in higher concentrations, to make a weapon. The government in Tehran says it wants to generate power and rejects Western allegations that it seeks to build an atomic bomb.
‘Weapons Option’
“We have serious concerns that Iran is deliberately attempting, at a minimum, to preserve a nuclear weapons option,” said Davies, in his first IAEA meeting since being appointed by Obama.
IAEA inspectors reported last month that the Iran “has not suspended its enrichment-related activities or its work on heavy-water-related projects as required by the Security Council.” The agency said it can’t exclude the possibility that there is a military purpose to Iran’s nuclear program.
“Against the background of the evidence available it is inexcusable that Iran continues to refuse any degree of transparency or cooperation in clarifying these outstanding issues,” France, Germany and the U.K. said in a joint statement today in Vienna.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki will present proposals for a new round of talks to the representatives of the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany, which have been leading discussions with Iran over the nuclear work, the state-run Fars news agency reported. The document will be handed to representatives today in Tehran.
Iran’s IAEA ambassador, Aliasghar Soltanieh, said at a Vienna press briefing that the proposals will include compromises on security, economic and nuclear issues.
Intelligence Estimate
U.S. experts concluded in a National Intelligence Estimate in December 2007 that Iran probably couldn’t produce a bomb until 2010.
Former President George W. Bush branded Iran, North Korea and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as an “axis of evil” in his 2002 state of the union speech. Iran has been under UN investigation since 2003, after it was discovered that the country hid work on its Natanz uranium-enrichment facility from the IAEA.
“These allegations were the Bush administration’s allegations,” Soltanieh said. “The international community is curious and enthusiastic and carefully monitoring the attitudes and conduct of the new U.S. administration.”
London’s Verification Research, Training and Information Center calculates that 630 kilograms (1,389 pounds) of low- enriched uranium could yield 15 to 22 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium, enough for the production of a device under the supervision of an expert bomb-maker. The IAEA says Iran has more than 1,500 kilograms of low-enriched uranium.
There is an old saying, what comes around goes around. Is this race to develop nuclear power also a race to build a nuclear bomb? If so, how long until a nuclear weapon finds its way into a major US city?
A lot of the power companies in the USA are working on wind energy and moving away from nuclear power. In the gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Texas, power companies are putting up wind turbines for power generation. In Oklahoma, power companies are putting up wind turbines right and left.
With the focus shifting from nuclear power to wind power, the next question is, why are the Arab states racing towards nuclear power? The only possible answer is so they can develop nuclear weapons.
Posted by: survivalist | September 10, 2009 at 02:09 PM