The United Arab Emirates will soon be the first Arab state with a nuclear power program and the first to join the civilian nuclear club in more than a quarter of a century. Barring any delays, the country’s first reactor is scheduled to be operational by May 2017, after further inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure the fuel is used only for peaceful purposes. So far, the project is on budget and on schedule. The remaining three 1,400 megawatt South Korean-designed reactors are under construction and will be gradually connected to the grid by May 2020.
Along with such progress have come concerns about Arab states using their forthcoming nuclear capabilities to build a weapon sometime in the future. Last year, Israel’s former Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, stated that “We see signs that countries in the Arab world are preparing to acquire nuclear weapons, that they are not willing to sit quietly with Iran on the brink of a nuclear or atomic bomb.” A year before that, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated that the “Iran deal will provoke other countries in the region to pursue equivalent nuclear capabilities, almost certainly Saudi Arabia.” And during one of her speeches to Goldman Sachs in 2013, according to transcripts released by Wikileaks, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “The Saudis are not going to stand by. They’re already trying to figure out how they will get their own nuclear weapons. Then the Emiratis are not going to let the Saudis have their own nuclear weapons… and then the race is off.”
[…]
Read more.
