At the time, no details of the size of the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor or the project timeline building were disclosed. In January 2016, during the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Saudi Arabia, the two countries signed an MoU to construct a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTR). In recent years, Saudi Arabia and China have publicly announced several joint nuclear projects in the Kingdom, including one to extract uranium from seawater, with the stated goal of helping the world’s largest oil producer develop a nuclear energy program or become a uranium exporter. Nuclear power could meet some of this demand. Ninety percent of the country’s drinking water is desalinated, which burns approximately 15% of the 9.8 million barrels of oil it produces daily. According to the government-owned Saudi Saline Water Conversion Corp (SWCC), by the end of 2017 the Kingdom had raised its desalinated water production to five million cubic meters per day (m3/d). Moreover, Saudi Arabia is the largest producer of desalinated water in the world. About one-third of Saudi Arabia’s daily oil production is consumed domestically at subsidized prices substituting nuclear energy would free up this petroleum for export at market prices. Nuclear energy would allow the Kingdom to increase its fossil fuel exports. Nuclear power is essential to Saudi Arabia to meet its growing energy demand for electricity generation and water desalination while reducing its reliance on depleting hydrocarbon resources. The projects’ cost could reach $80 billion, a huge opportunity for the Chinese companies and others that build and operate nuclear plants. įor the purpose of contextualizing these recent accounts, it is important to note that in 2011 Saudi Arabia declared that it planned to construct 16 nuclear power reactors within 25 years. Even if Saudi Arabia has decided to pursue a military nuclear program, it would be years before it could have the ability to produce a single nuclear warhead. However, US intelligence analysts had yet to draw firm conclusions about some of the sites under scrutiny. The intelligence agencies have identified a newly completed structure located near a solar-panel production facility in the vicinity of Riyadh - a structure that could be one of several undeclared nuclear sites. According to the classified analysis, Saudi Arabia is working with China to build industrial capacity to produce nuclear fuel that could later be enriched to weapons-grade level. ![]() The day after the WSJ appeared, The New York Times reported that US intelligence agencies are “scrutinizing” efforts by Saudi Arabia to augment its ability to produce nuclear fuel, which could then put the Kingdom on a path to developing nuclear weapons. ![]() Although the Saudi Energy Ministry has denied that the yellowcake uranium harvesting facility is under construction, the Kingdom nonetheless has made it clear that it intends to become proficient in every facet of the nuclear fuel cycle. Yellowcake, a semi-processed form of uranium, is itself the crucial ingredient for both nuclear power reactors and nuclear weapons. ![]() According to this account, the facility is being built with the assistance of two Chinese companies in a remote desert location near the northwest Saudi city of Ula, roughly midway between Medina and Tabuk, at the farthest distance from Iran. On August 4, 2020, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Western officials have grown concerned about nuclear cooperation between China and Saudi Arabia in the construction of a facility for extracting uranium yellowcake from uranium ore, a considerable shift in Riyadh’s civilian nuclear program. This essay is part of the series “All About China”-a journey into the history and diverse culture of China through essays that shed light on the lasting imprint of China’s past encounters with the Islamic world as well as an exploration of the increasingly vibrant and complex dynamics of contemporary Sino-Middle Eastern relations.
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