00:00I want to dig into that last issue a bit more here with somebody who's a renowned expert here on
00:03nuclear security and non-proliferation issues.
00:07That is the Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Corey Henderstein, who joins us now.
00:11Corey, let me ask you first of all just about the moment that we're in, and Jeff was alluding to
00:15it,
00:15the way that this could be kind of transformative to the Saudi economy, but a lot of questions about why
00:19this is indeed happening now.
00:21How are you processing this conversation that's taking place about the White House's willingness to help facilitate this in Saudi
00:27Arabia
00:27and indeed what it could mean for, yes, the Middle East, but the world more broadly?
00:33Thank you for having me this morning.
00:34This is a really interesting question because the Saudis have been pursuing nuclear energy for years.
00:41It comes from a couple of different approaches.
00:43One, they have some uranium deposits, although they may prove to be maybe less fruitful than they had hoped at
00:50one point.
00:52Any energy that they use domestically could free up oil that they could sell internationally, and the economics of that
00:59may be good.
01:00They're also probably interested in creating options for nuclear weapons in the future.
01:05It doesn't mean that they've made a decision to build a nuclear weapon,
01:08but Saudi leaders at multiple levels have said that they want the possibility to pursue a nuclear weapon if, for
01:16example, Iran was to acquire one.
01:18I mean, that seems like the key issue because Saudi, again, not hurting for energy.
01:22And also, if they really wanted a civilian nuclear program, they could have had one years ago.
01:26They've put out bids.
01:27My understanding is previously they've talked to China, Russia.
01:30They've investigated this before.
01:32Is there a reasonable non-military explanation for not making the same fuel restrictions on the Saudi deal
01:38that the U.S. did when it made its deal with the UAE in 2009?
01:42Well, obviously geopolitics are playing here.
01:45The United States wants to be Saudi's nuclear partner as opposed to China or Russia.
01:50And in order to do that, we have historically asked for constraints on those programs that China and Russia don't
01:57ask for.
01:57So the real question here is, which is more important, that the U.S. industry and strategic partnership be engaged
02:04with Saudi
02:05at the expense of Russia and China, or that we hold to some of these core nonproliferation principles?
02:12Now, I come from the nonproliferation community.
02:15Of course, I'm really committed to these nonproliferation principles.
02:18But there are some interesting, creative ways that previous administrations, the first Trump administration,
02:24the Biden administration, and the current Trump administration have looked at to say,
02:28are there ways we can get what we want and also give a little bit?
02:32And on the domestic enrichment, the issue that you've noted, what they seem to have said is,
02:39we will engage in a conversation about it, so we don't cut it off.
02:43But there has to be a later decision point.
02:45So there's a gate that has to go through related to economics.
02:48And then if we pass that gate, then yes, potentially there would be enrichment in Saudi Arabia,
02:54but it would be U.S. technology under U.S. control in some sort of black box arrangement.
02:58That's creative.
03:00I don't know if it can really happen, but I think it's kind of better than the alternative
03:05of opening the space for Russia and China, and certainly better than Saudi Arabia getting fed up
03:10and just pursuing a domestic program themselves.
03:12That's interesting.
03:13Corey, let me lean into a chain reaction metaphor here, obviously, so integral to nuclear energy,
03:18but also when it comes to policy surrounding it.
03:20Our colleague Mark Champion, who covers foreign affairs for Bloomberg Opinion, wrote a column about this,
03:24and he said this is a problem that's been kind of a tactical problem here but could really spread more
03:30widely.
03:30He said if the U.S. is allowed to bend nuclear nonproliferation rules for Saudi Arabia,
03:34then why not for Egypt, Turkey, South Korea, or Japan?
03:37And if that's okay for U.S. allies, then why not for Russian and Chinese ones also?
03:42Talk a bit about that, the way that we're seeing this play out here in somewhat of a vacuum,
03:46but the way that you're thinking through what a carve-out like this, an exception like this,
03:50going down this path might mean for nonproliferation more broadly.
03:54It's a really important question, and I think one that's loaded with a lot of misunderstandings about history.
04:00For example, we do talk about the gold standard in the context of the United Arab Emirates
04:06and what they have agreed to and what they've accepted as far as constraints on their program.
04:11But those were not imposed on the UAE.
04:13Those were initiated by the UAE.
04:15And what we've seen is Japan does have a different rule than Korea,
04:20and that creates problems in the relationships with our East Asian allies.
04:25We do have different rules with different countries.
04:27We do have a case-by-case basis.
04:30Now, there are certain foundational elements that we seek,
04:32but, for example, we have not required the no enrichment and no reprocessing commitment
04:39from other countries even since the UAE agreed to it.
04:42It's ideal, but sometimes we're not living in a perfect world,
04:47and when we're thinking about the relationship that nuclear energy can create,
04:51a multi-generational, multi-decadal, ongoing engagement with the United States,
04:56sometimes that leverage may be worth more than some other things that we have to give up.
05:01I also wonder, when you look at, let's say, who started Iran's nuclear program,
05:06the phrase atoms for peace comes to mind,
05:09if there's enough consideration about, yes, this administration, this regime in Saudi,
05:15is nominally friendly towards the United States,
05:17but that doesn't mean what comes down the line in five, ten years is going to be.
05:22And it seems to me the U.S. fails to learn this lesson time and time again.
05:25Again, we arm the Mujahideen that goes into the Taliban.
05:28The weapons that we left with the Shah went against us in Iran.
05:32Is there a fear that should this regime change and no longer be friendly to the United States,
05:36they would have armed a country that could be an antagonist to America?
05:41This is a really important point.
05:42I mean, these systems, these facilities, a nuclear power plant, a uranium enrichment plant,
05:49if one day they were to pursue that down the road, these are not things that can just be turned
05:53off.
05:54But there are things that we could do to constrain capability, but it's not a guarantee.
05:58And you're right that we haven't learned that lesson in all cases.
06:01There's another area where we may be repeating the problems of the past,
06:05and that's with our own civil nuclear program and how we're seeing about pursuing that going forward
06:10and looking at the use of some materials, including plutonium, that could have this dual use,
06:16being possible fuel for nuclear energy and fuel for a nuclear weapon.
06:21In the past, we spread highly enriched uranium all over the world
06:25because we thought these research reactors fueled by HEU were great collaborative projects.
06:31And then we've spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars
06:35collecting that HEU back to the United States.
06:37I don't want us to see us doing the same thing with plutonium.
06:40Let's end here with the announcement the president made yesterday,
06:43this event that he had in the Oval Office,
06:45the announcement that there's going to be more kind of civilian nuclear power efforts here in the U.S.
06:49to be happening kind of pioneered by or prompted by the private sector here.
06:54How do you greet that?
06:55It does seem like there increasingly is a conversation in this country
06:58that there's inevitability to there being more nuclear energy in the U.S.
07:02A good thing as you see it, not to be too blunt in my questioning,
07:06but are we at a point at which it does seem like this is a path that the U.S.
07:09has to go down
07:09in light of the demands that we're seeing placed on the energy grid?
07:13In my personal opinion, I think that nuclear energy and the expansion of civil nuclear energy
07:18is actually a good thing, especially domestically.
07:21But there are ways to do it right and there are ways to do it wrong.
07:24And exactly in the point we were just talking, let's learn our lessons.
07:28Let's think about the proliferation sensitivity of the materials we put into that ecosystem and into that supply chain.
07:34Let's think about the verification and monitoring that we can help the International Atomic Energy Agency build
07:40so that we have warning if things were to go into a non-civilian pathway.
07:45And let's use civil nuclear energy as both a partnership point
07:50and a pursuit of clean energy, lower carbon future, and energy security.
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