As the Middle East governments struggle to keep up with the growing power demand of expanding and urbanising population, traditional fuel sources are proving insufficient. Although the region is rich in hydrocarbons, gas is in short supply and oil-burning plants detract from countries’ export capacities, as well as producing environmentally harmful carbon emissions.

It is our responsibility to continually evaluate and enhance safety standards throughout the programme

Mohammed al-Hammadi, Enec

One alternative source of base-load energy that has been gaining traction in the Middle East is nuclear power. Last year, Iran brought a reactor online as part of its controversial atomic programme. A nuclear power plant is under construction in the UAE and Jordan is committed to exploiting its uranium reserves and building nuclear power plants in order to become an electricity exporter. Other states in the region, including Saudi Arabia, are also looking seriously at developing nuclear energy.

Short power supply

However, progress faltered on nuclear power programmes in the region as a result of the Arab uprisings and Japan’s nuclear disaster in March. The wave of unrest that swept across the region caused projects in all sectors to slow and even the most advanced nuclear programmes, such as that of the UAE, were forced to assess the implication of events in Japan.

Despite the challenges of 2011, the UAE’s nuclear power programme is still on schedule

One year on, the lessons from Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, which led to meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, are still being learnt, but already key findings are being shared with those operating or planning atomic power projects.

“There are some countries, in particular the UAE, that have taken the concrete steps to say they will take the lessons from Fukushima in their stride and prepare their programmes,” says Anne Starz, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Integrated Nuclear Infrastructure Group. “We had a big workshop in Vienna, attended by more than 40 countries, and we discussed this topic.”

Building a nuclear power programme is a long process, taking at least 10-15 years. The French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) calculated in a 2008 paper that it takes five years to set up the legal and regulatory infrastructure, two to 10 years to license a plant, and five years to build it. The key advantages of the technology are its scale, efficiency and low operating costs.

Egypt has the region’s longest-running nuclear ambitions, having set up its licensing body in 1955, and still has no reactor. Of the Middle East states hoping to develop nuclear power, the UAE is the most advanced. It faces a serious gas shortage and nuclear power is essential if future electricity demand is to be met. The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (Enec) was established in December 2009 to implement the country’s nuclear programme.

Since then it has made rapid progress and awarded the main contract to build four 1,400MW nuclear reactors to Seoul’s Korea Electric Power Company (Kepco) in December 2010. Following the Fukushima disaster, the UAE acted swiftly, sending a team of experts to Japan to learn from the incident before filing a report to the local regulator, the Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation, in December 2011.

Valuable safety lessons

Enec was quick to assure the public that the Kepco APR1400 reactors had been designed to withstand extreme events including tsunamis, earthquakes and power outages. The site for the plant at Braka in the Western Region of Abu Dhabi was selected in part for its low seismicity.

“We are confident in the robustness of the technology, the rigour of our design, and the extensive analysis and research that led to the identification of our preferred site,” said Mohamed al-Hammadi, chief executive officer of Enec, in a statement when the report was submitted. “However, it is our responsibility to continually evaluate and enhance safety standards throughout the life of the programme and we are committed to applying any relevant lessons learned from Japan to ensure our plants maintain the highest standards of safety possible.”

The main focus of Enec’s additional assessment was to determine how the reactors would perform in worst-case scenarios. “It means we have to go back and look at how we define initiating events. It is really a site-specific analysis where you look at what it is that we need to do to protect the site against reasonably expected events and then, if those are exceeded, at what level of event the systems will fail,” says John Nakoski, nuclear safety analyst at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Nuclear Energy Agency.

This can have many implications for power plant design and each location will have its own challenges. For example, waterproofing the back-up power plants may not be necessary where there is no risk of a tsunami or flooding.

“One of the most interesting challenges in the Middle East is sand. What will happen to diesel generators during a sandstorm is one of the things that they are looking at in the UAE. If the sand gets up, what do we need to do to protect the safety-related equipment?” says Nakoski.

Nuclear power standards

Despite the challenges of 2011, the UAE’s nuclear power programme is still on schedule. The first reactor is due to start up in 2017, followed by another reactor each year until 2020. Countries including Jordan, Egypt and Libya had been working to a similar time scale, but progress has been much slower.

Sources close to the Egypt project tell MEED that it is on hold following last year’s revolution. A decision on its future was expected in April, but this seems unlikely given the ongoing unrest. “We did not expect them to be taking decisions about nuclear power in the midst of those transitions,” says the IAEA’s Starz. “So I think when things settle down a bit we will have a clearer understanding of their intentions regarding nuclear power.”

In April 2010, Riyadh established the King Abdullah City for Atomic & Renewable Energy (Kacare) to drive its nuclear programme. Peak power demand in Saudi Arabia is growing by up to 10 per cent a year. The government has announced plans for 16 nuclear power stations to come online from 2021. In November 2011, Riyadh reaffirmed this commitment when it signed an agreement with South Korea for cooperation in the development and use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes.

Jordan currently imports more than 95 per cent of its energy. Its Committee for Nuclear Strategy has laid out a programme for nuclear power to provide 30 per cent of electricity by 2040, as well as allowing for exports.

The Jordan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) is tasked with transforming the country from a net importer of electricity to a net exporter by 2030. Amman is working on plans for a 2,000MW nuclear plant, but it lacks financial resources on the scale of the UAE or Saudi Arabia and this is slowing progress. In February, the head of the JAEC, Khaled Toukan, announced that a preferred bidder for the project would be announced in March and that the subsequent negotiations would take up to 18 months.

Three teams have prequalified to build the plan, including France’s Areva with Japan’s Mitsubishi, Russia’s Atomstroyexport and Atomic Energy of Canada. However, the House of Representatives is set to review the scheme over the coming months and make a final decision on whether Jordan should continue with its nuclear project.

Kuwait is the only Middle East state to have publicly abandoned its nuclear plans in response to the events of last year. In July 2011, Deputy Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sabah announced that the country would not pursue nuclear power and the government disbanded its Kuwait National Nuclear Energy Committee.

Growing power demand

Iran is unique in the Middle East, in that it has already built a nuclear facility and had it provide power to the grid. The ongoing saga of the Bushehr project, which was completed in 2010, but has yet to operate at full capacity, date back to 1975 when it was launched with German support. It was abandoned after the 1979 revolution and after a hiatus in the 1980s, construction was restarted by Russia’s Rusatom Corporation in 1991. The plant was officially inaugurated in September 2011. As of the start of February, the plant had not reached its full capacity of 1,000MW.

Nuclear power in Iran is a thorny issue. Despite being party to the UN Security Council’s (UNSC) Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Tehran has been reluctant to give IAEA inspectors access to its facilities. The UNSC has ordered Iran to stop uranium enrichment that could be used in atomic weaponry, but Iran is refusing to comply and last month unveiled faster, more efficient uranium enrichment centrifuges.

The politicised aspects of Iran’s nuclear programme make it unique, but the rest of the region also faces hurdles in successfully delivering nuclear power.

The Fukushima meltdown has highlighted once again the dangers inherent in nuclear power projects, but the scale of electricity demand forecast for the Middle East means that the region’s largest countries have to consider atomic energy. Together with dwindling oil reserves and a need to lower carbon emissions, this will keep the region’s nuclear projects moving forwards, no matter how slowly.