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Home Posts A Uranium Enrichment Facility on Saudi Soil?

A Uranium Enrichment Facility on Saudi Soil?
27 September, 2023
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The reports about Saudi Arabia's desire to receive assistance in the establishment of uranium enrichment facilities on Saudi soil raise concern in Israel, and rightly so, about the implication of the very establishment of an enrichment facility in the territory of an Arab country and the possibility that other Arab or Muslim countries will demand similar assistance.

The nuclear industry is a dual-use industry: military use and peaceful use. The line between the technologies required for these uses is quite clear.

Uranium, which serves as a basic material for the production of nuclear energy, is a non-fissile element in its natural state, and therefore it is not possible to produce nuclear energy from it. Natural uranium contains tiny amounts of fissile uranium atoms, but the fissile uranium must be isolated from the natural uranium. This process, called enrichment, can be carried out by a variety of methods, the most common of which is by using centrifuges, and this is probably the technology that the Saudis want to adopt.

The various applications of nuclear energy depend on the concentration or amount of fissile material in relation to the amount of non-fissile material - that is, the level of enrichment. Low enrichment levels are suitable for peaceful applications of nuclear energy (such as power reactors to produce energy for creating electricity) while high enrichment levels are suitable for military needs.

In addition, the enrichment facility is not a stand-alone facility. It is a complex of facilities that require a great deal of technological know-how for operation: first of all, a chemical facility is needed to transform the solid uranium ore ("yellow cake") through complex chemical processes into a gaseous compound suitable for the enrichment process. Upon attainment, the composition, enriched with the fissile material at different levels, must be transferred to another chemical facility in order to convert it from a gaseous state to a solid state. In the third stage, an additional facility is needed to process the metallic solid into a form suitable for the desired application – fuel rods for a reactor or raw material for weapons.

In order to produce a nuclear weapon with enriched uranium, a nuclear reactor is not needed. If this is the case, the main question is what is Saudi Arabia’s goal with this demand and why does it need enrichment facilities. If it is a matter of using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, i.e., low-enriched uranium, these components can be purchased from specific countries such as the US, France, Great Britain, and others that supply power reactors along with nuclear fuel while strictly controlling the fuel rods and replacing them when necessary. In the absence of a Saudi requirement for the reactor, there is a suspicion that the enrichment facility may be used as a basis for accumulating knowledge and experience required for the production of raw material for nuclear weapons, if/when Saudi Arabia feels threatened by neighboring countries.

Topics: Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, Peace Agreements and Normalization in the Middle East
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  • Research

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      • Israel and the Global Powers
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