"Saudi Arabia plans to build 16 nuclear power reactors by 2030 which could costs more than $100 billion, a Saudi-based newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing a top official." http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFLDE75004Q20110601
16 reactors by 2030? I wonder why an Arab country in a massive sun belt would want 16 reactors in such a short amount of time. Is it a genuine interest in nuclear power? Might be. Or, the nuclear industry could just be causing nuclear weapons proliferation again.
If this goes ahead it, they will probably go for French Areva EPRs and Areva will probably supply the fuel and take back the spent fuel. This is the arrangement the UAE has with the Sth Koreans. I'd bet the US will lean on them very hard for such an arrangement. The EPR is a Pressurized Water Reactor and spent fuel from PWRs is not very good for making weapons. Plutonium can be extracted by reprocessing but isotope mix is wrong. Along with the Pu-239 comes Pu-240 and other stuff. It is very difficult if not impossible to separate out the Pu-239 to the required "Weapons grade" purity. If they wanted to make bombs, a "research" reactor would be a much easier and cheaper proposition. EPR is a big reactor at 1650MWe and sixteen would give them 26GW - more than Germany's current capacity. Why not solar? They will probably do some of that too, but nuclear is substantially cheaper and more reliable. If CSP proves itself and costs drop enough, who knows - but that is still a fair way off.
Having found out how profitable exporting oil can be they are probably looking at exporting electricity too. The advantage here is large areas with very low density of population. So, any smaller "accidents" would affect only the staff at the plant and their families living nearby. Stepping into the area of science fiction, if under attack from one of the neighbouring countries, they could blow their own plant to create a zone inaccessible to enemy troops. Have the reactor locations been made public already? Are the reactors gonna be located mainly along the borders?
I heard they are not only shutting down 7 plants but possibly 3 more from pre '80s built plants. 10 total?
I assume that you're speaking of nuclear FISSION. I agree that it's incredibly dirty. However, nuclear FUSION is a much more likely candidate for providing the energy needs of the future. Now all we need is to actually stop killing all of the funding for nuclear FUSION research.
If they do this is they will probably not go for French Areva EPRs instead of Russia reactors which are cheaper and give them the flexibility to produce weapons grade material. And what's the US going to lean on them with, exactly? What does the US have that other countries care about?
They may go with the Russians, or the Sth Koreans, or the Chinese, or the Japanese. The Chinese will quite likely offer some derivative of the Westinghouse AP-1000 Generation III+ design for export in a few years time. They have IPR for it. If they go with the Russians it will be VVER which is also a PWR and no more suited to producing weapons grade material than the EPR. And the fuel supply arrangements are likely to be the same.