Comments on: Looming Saudi Energy Crisis?

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 22:07:04 +0000

@Dan: You’re right that it’s never been done. I think, though, that if it’s to be done, the Saudis are the ones to do it. Most of the delay in building nuclear plants, it seems to me, is regulatory. The Saudis don’t have to worry very much about that, other than what IAEA demands.

There are two factors, I think, that make the Saudi enterprise different: 1) next to unlimited funding and 2) a screaming demand for electricity. They can hire the expertise, buy most of the equipment from an array of willing suppliers, and have the wherewithal to get the work done without worrying about stoppages.

I think their hardest task will be in siting. Because reactors have such heavy demands on water–in short supply in the KSA–I suspect they’ll end up building desalination plants solely for cooling the nuclear plants.

By: dan

dan — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 14:19:43 +0000

You’re way off on this – no civilian nuclear power plant has ever been built in such a short time-frame, and the Saudis would be starting from zero on this, as they have no indigenous nuclear engineering capacity to draw on. Quite how the Saudis could go from a blank slate to a working plant in world-record time eludes me.

Buying off the shelf isn’t quite so straightforward as you imagine – just doing the contractual specs, tendering and then choosing a supplier, site location, development of supporting infrastructure etc would take upwards of a decade to do, assuming competent project management. And that’s before we take into account the inevitable schedule slippages that are routine in nuclear power projects. Bear in mind that there are very few suppliers in this business, and the time-frames for build-out will be determined, more than anything, by vendor capacity.