Facing the nuclear storm
*) This piece is a summary of an essay that appeared in print in The Cairo Review of Global Affairs (fall 2019)
Energy resilience is an evolving concept, which might be defined as the ability of an energy system to preempt as well as to adapt to possible disruptive and challenging environments such as a tsunami or a heat wave, and to resume service provision swiftly.
Within the global trend of increased renewable energy and decentralized systems, which enhance the resilience of energy system, a question arises concerning the effect of nuclear power on the energy system resilience in countries with existing and aspiring nuclear projects, such as those in the Middle East.
Nuclear vulnerabilities and disruptions
Understanding the resilience of nuclear power proposals in the Middle East requires a brief analysis of threats and consequences at each stage of the nuclear process. The term “threat” refers to events that may cause disruptions and enhance vulnerabilities of the whole power system.
Fuel supply
The main threat to front-end activities regard the disruption of enriched uranium supply due to regional geopolitical tensions, since the global value chains of uranium fuel do not face major impediments. However, the politicizing of the region’s nuclear power ambitions could prove to be a challenging environment to permanently access the international uranium fuel and enrichment markets. On the other hand, domestically producing fuel and enriching it is not only economically inefficient, it is can be politically costly. The Iranian situation is case in point.
Attacks against critical nuclear facilities
One of the main threats to nuclear power infrastructure might include the use of nuclear reactors and auxiliary infrastructure as targets, given the high level of current volatility and the historical record of attacks against nuclear facilities in the Middle East region. Also, terrorist attacks are a threat intrinsic to the region, with jihadist and rebel groups enhancing their capabilities. For instance, the claim by the Yemeni Houthi rebel group that they targeted Barakah nuclear power plant, whether it is true or not, underlines the possible vulnerability of nuclear reactors. Although attacks on operational nuclear power plants have not taken place, such a possibility should not be dismissed.
Foreign workforce
Another potential threat, linked to regional instability and exercises of political leverage regards the outsourcing of human resources in the nuclear field to foreign workforce, with the exception of Iran and Egypt. Most workers come from countries -Russia and South Korea- that supply nuclear technology and, in some instances, they might request to employ their own trained taskforce. The involvement of foreign workers raises numerous issues: they might be recalled at any moment, leaving the plant unoperational, thus they are also a tool of political leverage.
Climatic effects
Increasingly unpredictable and abnormal climate pattern might also affect the resilience of nuclear power plants in the region, especially heat waves, due to their impact on the temperature of the reactor’s cooling water, also in the case of new designs that consider varying cooling water temperature.
Moreover, a heat wave may also affect the operations of a nuclear power plant since it would reduce the efficiency of turning fuel into electricity and increase the number of shutdowns, leading to substantial economic losses.
Nuclear reactors and the grid
A key element of nuclear power plants is the way they interact with the power grid. The plant should be able to “follow the load”, in other words to vary its power output depending on the demanded load at any given time. However, nuclear power plants are usually designed to produce a constant load at all times due to economic and technical constraints.
The impact of a nuclear power plant shutdown also depends on the share of energy mix provided by the plant, especially for countries, such as Jordan, with a small grid capacity (roughly 3.8 GW). In this case, the establishment of a 1GW reactor unit would represent more than one-fourth of total power supply, posing security and technical challenges. However, in 2018, Jordan announced that it would switch to small reactors to benefit from lower costs and higher grid suitability.
Summary
Numerous threats have shown the relationship between the proposals of nuclear power plants in the Middle East and the narrative of energy resilience. Nuclear power is vulnerable to climatic effects and natural disasters as well as attacks carried out by states and non-state actors, as the recent attacks on Saudi Aramco oil infrastructure have highlighted.
With nuclear proposals becoming reality in the region, we need risk mitigation strategies and better emergency responses, which should be based on depoliticized technical cooperation among the countries in the region, including those without nuclear programs since the effects of nuclear accidents are usually cross-border.
