The madness of nuclear power in Saudi Arabia
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry (with sword), alongside Saudi energy ministerOne year has passed since the brutal murder, and macabre dismemberment, of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbal, Turkey, at the hands of a high-level Saudi regime death squad. Official U.S. and United Nations reports implicate Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in having ordered the assassination. The genocidal Saudi-led war and siege of Yemen continues, with Houthi rebel attacks igniting Saudi oil fields deep within the country, and causing recent large-scale Saudi coalition casualties at the front lines on its border. Is this a place where nuclear power plants should be built? Bennett Ramberg warned in 1985 that nuclear power plants could serve as pre-deployed weapons for an enemy, if they chose to attack them, veritable dirty bombs of immense size. In fact, Houthi forces previously fired a warning shot across the bow at a pre-operational nuclear plant in United Arab Emirates; the atomic reactor has since fired up, unfortunately. Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei, while still serving as Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned that the reason Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia were pursuing nuclear power, was in order to have a pathway to nuclear weapons, if they chose to use it that way. In fact, MBS has admitted as much on a CBS "60 Minutes" interview. Despite the inherent risk that uranium enrichment and/or plutonium reprocessing can be used for nuclear weapons production, the Trump administration has continuously tried to do end runs around congressional safeguards against nuclear weapons proliferation, in order to transfer U.S. nuclear technology and know how to Saudi Arabia. U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee, has reported that corporate and personal greed are a prime motivation, despite the risks. Scandalously, the same Canadian firm that bailed out Jared Kushner's family from its billion dollar, bad real estate investment at 666 5th Avenue in Manhattan, also owns Westinghouse Nuclear, which is vying to sell atomic reactors to Saudi Arabia; Kushner has been Trump's point person in all things Saudi Arabian. But Trump's Energy Secretary, Rick Perry, has also met with his Saudi counterparts, regarding nuclear commerce, including recently (see photo, above left, of Perry in Saudi-style robe, holding a sword, shown with Saudi Minister of Energy, Khalid al-Falih; Perry is now implicated in the Trump impeachment inquiry as well, as reported by the Washington Post, having led the Trump administration delegation to Ukrainian President Zelensky's inauguration.) As decades-long, leading congressional nuclear watchdog, U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), pointed out a decade ago, "Saudi Arabia is the Saudi Arabia of solar power!" Nuclear power makes no sense there, from a safety, security, and non-proliferation perspective. Saudi nuclear power risks an arms race with Israel (which already has nuclear weapons), Iran (there are fears it could use its nuclear power industry to break out into nuclear weapons production), and perhaps other countries. As U.S. Representative Brad Sherman (D-CA) has put it, "A country that can't be trusted with a bone saw shouldn't be trusted with nuclear weapons."
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As reported by the Washington Post, just as U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry became embroiled in the Trump-Ukraine impeachment scandal, he announced his resignation by the end of the year.
Perry has been a good friend to the nuclear power industry in the U.S. He has long advocated "low-level" radioactive waste dumping in West Texas -- the owner of Waste Control Specialists (WCS), Dallas billionaire Harold "King of Superfund Sites" Simmons, was Perry's biggest campaign contributor, over multiple campaigns for governor, and even president.
This long support for WCS then morphed into Perry's advocacy for high-level radioactive waste "consolidated interim storage" in West Texas. Last spring, as Energy Secretary, Perry let it be known at a congressional hearing that he is even supportive of "interim" becoming permanent surface storage. As the U.S. Department of Energy itself has acknowledged, in its Yucca Mountain Environmental Impact Statement, this would risk catastrophic releases of hazardous radioactivity into the environment, as containers failed, with a corresponding loss of institutional control (failure to replace degraded containers before they leaked).
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Reuters has reported that Energy Secretary Rick Perry now denies he will resign this month or next month. This begs the question, will he resign in December, then?!
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The New York Times has also reported on the U.S. Energy Secretary, in an article entitled "Rick Perry's Focus on Gas Company Entangles Him in Ukraine Case."
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As reported by the Washington Post:
12:15 p.m.: Perry declines to say whether he will comply with subpoena
In an appearance on Fox Business Network on Wednesday, Energy Secretary Rick Perry declined to commit about complying with a congressional subpoena.
“Hey, listen,” Perry said. “The House has sent a subpoena over for the records that we have. And our general counsel and the White House counsel are going through the process right now. And I’m going to follow the lead of the, of my counsel on that.”
Friday is the deadline for documents to be released from the White House and Perry. Trump has said Perry asked him to make the July call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but Perry told reporters last week he did it so that the two could talk about energy issues.