Saudi Arabia’s 1st nuclear reactor nearly finished

Saudi Arabia has nearly completed its first nuclear reactor, new satellite images have showed, but it has yet to express any readiness to abide by safeguards that would prevent it making a bomb, the media reported on Thursday.

The reactor site is in the King Abdulaziz city for scienceand technology on the outskirts of Riyadh. The site was identified by RobertKelley, a former director for nuclear inspections at the International AtomicEnergy Agency (IAEA), who said it was very small 30-kilowatt research reactor,not far from completion, the Guardian reported.

   

“I would guess they could have it all done, with theroof in place and the electricity turned on, within a year,” said Kelley,who worked for more than three decades in research and engineering in the USnuclear weapons complex.

The satellite photos show that a 10-metre high steel tubularvessel, which will contain the nuclear fuel, has been erected, and constructionwork is under way on the surrounding concrete building.

Kelley said the main practical purpose of the researchreactor would be to train nuclear technicians, but it also marked the crossingof a nuclear threshold.

Before inserting nuclear fuel into the reactor, Saudi Arabiawould have to implement a comprehensive set of rules and procedures, includingIAEA inspections, designed to ensure no fissile material was diverted for usein weapons – something it has so far avoided.

The reactor has been designed by an Argentinian state-ownedcompany, Invap SE.

“This reactor should be operational by the end of theyear roughly,” Rafael Mariano Grossi, Argentina’s envoy to the IAEA,confirmed.

“It depends on a number of factors. Invap is in chargeof design. They are directing all the operations. But the local engineering isbeing done by the Saudis.”

The emergence of the images comes in the midst of a strugglebetween the US President Donald Trump’s administration and Congress over thesale of nuclear technology to Riyadh, after it emerged that the Department ofEnergy had granted seven permits for the transfer of sensitive nuclearinformation by American businesses to the Saudi government, the Guardian said.

Saudi Arabia joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in1988 but signed a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA only in2005, and at the same time exempted itself from regular inspections, by signinga “small quantities protocol”, designed for countries with negligiblequantities of nuclear material.

Riyadh has so far resisted IAEA requests for it to rescindthat protocol and accept stricter controls.

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