meed-logo

line1 line2 line3
SIGN IN / REGISTER

Small reactors top nuclear agenda

25 August 2023

This package also includes: Mena pushes for nuclear future

 

Small modular reactor (SMR) solutions could offset concerns about capital expenditure, construction delays and spent-fuel reprocessing that large-scale nuclear power plants present.

SMRs are advanced nuclear reactors that have a power capacity of up to 300MW a unit, which is about one-third of the generating capacity of traditional nuclear power reactors, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

They can be factory-assembled, transported and installed in locations not suitable for larger nuclear power plants, such as industrial zones or remote areas with limited grid capacity. This makes them more affordable and easier to build than large reactors.

So far, there are only two advanced SMR installations globally, one in China and the other in Russia. The US’ NuScale is also working towards deploying its first modules in Idaho.

Saudi Arabia and Jordan have been considering deploying SMR solutions as part of their nuclear power programmes.

In 2020, King Abdullah City for Atomic & Renewable Energy (KA-Care) and South Korea’s Science & ICT (Information & Communication Technology) Ministry set up a joint venture to undertake the commercialisation and construction of South Korea’s system-integrated modular advanced reactor technology in the kingdom with the help of Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power.

Nuclear energy is having a revival moment as a recognised part of climate mitigation
Karen Young, Centre on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University

Seeking partners

Jordan, for its part, signed an agreement with Russia for the construction of two 1,000MW reactors in 2015, but the project was cancelled three years later.

Jordan is now considering small nuclear reactors and is talking to potential partners including Russia, South Korea, France and the UK to determine the optimal technical specifications and how to adapt the reactors to the Jordanian environment, Khaled Toukan, chairman of the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission, said in April.

Jordan hopes to use small nuclear reactors for water desalination and power production.

“We have done all the studies,” Toukan said at the time. “The infrastructure is in place, and studies on site selection and the provision of cooling water are in place. Now, we are comparing technologies and we want to get the go-ahead from the government.”

According to Karen Young, a senior research scholar at the Centre on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University in the US, “nuclear energy is having a revival moment as a recognised part of climate mitigation”. 

She says: “We simply do not have other ways of ramping up non-carbon energy production as easily. Technology innovations in SMRs, among others, make this look like a more viable option.”

However, SMRs are as yet unproven, points out Paddy Padmanathan, co-founder and vice-chairman of green hydrogen firm Zhero. He adds that solar and wind projects with battery energy storage systems cost significantly less, despite the subsidies some governments allocate to nuclear power plant projects.

We simply do not have other ways of ramping up non-carbon energy production as easily

Spent fuel

Regardless of a nuclear plant’s size, the storage or reprocessing of the resulting highly radioactive solid waste is a key safety and environmental concern. 

Nuclear reactors require ceramic pellets of low-enriched uranium oxide. These are stacked vertically and encased in metallic cladding to form a fuel rod. The fuel rods are bundled into fuel assemblies that are placed into the reactor. 

The fuel pellets remain in the reactors for five or six years of operation, or until the fission process uses up the uranium fuel. 

The US, which generates about 2,000 tonnes of spent fuel a year, stores the solid waste across 70 reactor sites in the country. Research and development into how to recycle spent fuel, or to design advanced reactors that could consume it, is also under way.

With 58 nuclear power plants generating over 70 per cent of its electricity, France produces nearly 1,150 tonnes of spent fuel a year. Unlike the US, France recycles spent fuel through a process that converts spent plutonium – formed in nuclear power reactors as a by-product of burning uranium fuel – and uranium into a mixed oxide that can be reused in nuclear plants to produce more electricity.

In Iran, meanwhile, the policy at the 1,000MW Bushehr reactor entails cooling down spent fuel in an onsite pool, a process that takes at least five years. It is then transported in steel cylinders that are welded closed to a central storage location in the country’s Anarak region.

UAE policy

The UAE government is developing a long-term storage policy for spent fuel from its Barakah nuclear power plant, the first reactor of which began producing electricity in 2021. The current plan involves placing the fuel assemblies in concrete and steel-lined cooling pools located at the Barakah plant, after which they will be stored in dry casks either on site or at a long-term storage facility.

According to Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation, the UAE still has plenty of time to make decisions about spent-fuel management, as the first batch of nuclear fuel will be stored for 20-30 years in the spent-fuel pool.

https://image.digitalinsightresearch.in/uploads/NewsArticle/11020048/main.gif
Jennifer Aguinaldo

Register for MEED's guest program now to access this article.

Click here to register
Exclusive from Meed
Related Articles
  • Powering the next chapter with nuclear energy

    8 September 2026

    Commentary
    Colin Foreman
    Editor

    Nuclear energy is increasingly being viewed as essential around the world. It offers a non-CO2-emitting, steady baseload at a time when governments have made net-zero commitments. 

    In the Gulf, the UAE has spent the past 15 years building the Middle East’s first commercial nuclear plant, now supplying about a quarter of the country’s electricity. What is new is the breadth of ambition beyond Abu Dhabi. The civil nuclear cooperation deal signed between Saudi Arabia and the US in July is the most significant step in the kingdom’s nuclear programme for several years, and it lands as the region moves decisively towards atomic power.

    The logic is clear. Electricity demand from industry, desalination and digital infrastructure is climbing, and governments want reliable low-carbon supply to meet it. Saudi Arabia is targeting up to 17GW of nuclear capacity by 2040. Its first plant at Khor Duwaiheen, comprising two 1.4GW reactors, represents only about a sixth of that goal, which points to a programme rather than a one-off.

    What is new is the breadth of ambition beyond Abu Dhabi

    The opportunity extends well beyond reactors. The UAE’s nuclear programme shows the scale of the economic impact. More than 2,000 local firms secured contracts worth over $6.7bn supporting construction, operations and maintenance. 

    Saudi Arabia’s ambitions reach further still, into small modular reactors, domestic uranium and elements of the fuel cycle. At the same time, Bahrain is studying a modular plant to power its industrial base, and Egypt’s 4.8GW El-Dabaa project is already under construction, with first generation expected in 2028.

    For contractors, engineers and financiers, this is the beginning of a projects market that will unfold over decades. The reactor awards will grab the headlines, but the supporting ecosystem, from regulation and fuel supply to workforce development, is where much of the value lies.

    READ THE SEPTEMBER 2026 MEED BUSINESS REVIEW – click here to view PDF

    Nuclear power ambitions gather pace; Kuwait keeps dealmaking alive despite war; Region invests in raising gas processing capacity.

    Distributed to senior decision-makers in the region and around the world, the September 2026 edition of MEED Business Review includes:
    To see previous issues of MEED Business Review, please click here
    https://image.digitalinsightresearch.in/uploads/NewsArticle/19461185/main.gif
    Colin Foreman
  • WEBINAR: Mena Water & Wastewater Projects Market 2026

    8 September 2026

    Webinar: Mena Water & Wastewater Projects Market 2026
    Thursday 24 September 2026 | 11:00 AM GST  |  Register now

    Agenda:

    • GCC water projects outlook
    • Key water projects and contracts awarded year to date
    • Market trends, opportunities and challenges
    • Key tenders and awards over the next 18 months
    • Long-term capital expenditure outlays and forecasts
    • Top contractors and clients
    • Spending by segment: desalination, storage, transmission and treatment
    • Evolution of PPP models in water projects
    • Key drivers and challenges going forward
    • Audience Q&A

    Hosted by: Mark Dowdall, MEED’s power & water editor

    Click here to register

    https://image.digitalinsightresearch.in/uploads/NewsArticle/19459896/main.gif
    Mark Dowdall
  • Arabian Drilling wins $800m contract from SLB in Saudi Arabia

    8 September 2026

    Saudi Arabia-based Arabian Drilling has announced it has secured a new five-year contract with US-based oilfield services major SLB, valued at SR3bn ($800m), to provide 11 land drilling rigs for gas lump sum turnkey (LSTK) operations in the kingdom.

    Under the new contract, Arabian Drilling will provide 11 land rigs and associated drilling services to support SLB’s gas LSTK operations in Saudi Arabia.

    The 11 rigs covered under the agreement are the incumbent units currently deployed under an existing gas LSTK project with SLB.

    The contract is expected to begin contributing to Arabian Drilling’s revenues from the third quarter of 2026. The award will also support continued utilisation of the company’s land drilling fleet throughout the contract period.

    “The rigs will be utilised for gas drilling activities, supporting the development of Saudi Arabia’s gas resources and the kingdom’s broader energy sector objectives,” Saudi Exchange (Tadawul)-listed Arabian Drilling said.

    “The contract represents a major award for Arabian Drilling and strengthens the company’s long-term revenue visibility and operational backlog,” the company added.

    Before winning this contract from SLB, Arabian Drilling signed a contract in August with Masirah Oil and Northern Offshore to drill two firm wells and two optional wells in Oman, marking the company’s entry into a new GCC market.

    The contract was signed on 17 August and is worth less than 5% of Arabian Drilling’s 2025 total revenue, the company said in a 19 August addendum.

    Operations are expected to begin before the end of Q3 2026, with the contract ending upon completion of the drilling operations. The financial impact is expected to be reflected in Arabian Drilling’s 2026 results.

    The contract follows the early completion of the company’s first international offshore drilling contract and the redeployment of its jack-up rig to another GCC market.

    https://image.digitalinsightresearch.in/uploads/NewsArticle/19437495/main42381031.jpg
    Indrajit Sen
  • Conflict bolsters case for Saudi economic diversification

    7 September 2026

     

    Billions of dollars’ worth of deals were announced at the Leap technology conference in the Saudi capital in late August and early September – a welcome fillip for an economy that is struggling to deal with the effects of the Iran war.

    Among the biggest deals unveiled at the Riyadh Exhibition & Convention Centre were a $1.2bn investment in data centres by the local Al-Moammar Information Systems and an $880m commitment from NHC Innovation to develop data centres in Khuzam Digital Valley, to the north of the capital. There were numerous other, smaller financing commitments around cloud services, artificial intelligence (AI), and research and development centres.

    Technology is a priority area for the Saudi government’s economic diversification efforts and, for now at least, the indicators are moving in the right direction. The Public Investment Fund’s AI subsidiary, Humain, has been particularly active in striking deals, and other bodies are also throwing their weight behind the sector. A few days before Leap got under way, the Royal Commission for Riyadh City launched the Riyadh Digital Innovation District, aimed at turning the capital into a technology and innovation hub.

    Economic strains

    The wider economic picture is, however, far more mixed. Figures issued by the General Authority for Statistics in mid-August revealed a 4.8% contraction in GDP in the second quarter of the year, compared with the same period a year earlier. The decline was driven by a 25% contraction in the oil sector.

    Hydrocarbons remain the central pillar of the Saudi economy, and the Iran war has placed it under enormous pressure, with exports through the Strait of Hormuz difficult – if not impossible – for much of the past six months. The alternative route via the Red Sea has its own difficulties, thanks to Houthi attacks on shipping around the Bab El-Mandeb strait. As a result, Saudi oil cargoes heading to Asia are being diverted via the Suez Canal and around Africa – a route that adds weeks to the journey.

    Lower oil revenues weaken the state’s fiscal position and are leading to larger budget deficits, which need to be funded through other means. On 1 September, the National Debt Management Centre (NDMC) announced it had sold $3.25bn-worth of sharia-compliant bonds (sukuk) to international investors. It said it had received orders for $16.5bn, indicating there remains strong appetite among overseas buyers.

    In May, the NDMC said it had secured around 90% of the government’s funding needs for the year, even before the euphemistically named “geopolitical events” had broken out. It added at the time that, should additional financing be needed, it would turn to “private channels and local markets” as the main funding sources, while also monitoring international markets to see if “favourable opportunities arise”.

    One positive element amid the gloom is that the non-oil private sector has proved relatively resilient and has continued to grow for most of the time since the war began in late February. The purchasing managers’ index (PMI) survey compiled by Riyad Bank shows the non-oil sector expanded each month from April to August. Reviewing the latest PMI data, Naif Al-Ghaith, chief economist at Riyad Bank, said it expected the Saudi non-oil economy to “maintain solid growth momentum through the second half of the year”.

    However, there are warning signs. Job creation is relatively weak, and business confidence is fragile: in the August PMI survey, only one in five respondents said they expected increased activity over the next 12 months.

    Other data points offer further reasons for caution. Saudi bank deposits fell slightly in July to SR3.11tn ($820bn) – the first drop since October last year – according to data from the central bank.

    Exports are also struggling due to higher transport costs. Saudi Arabia’s total exports were 10% lower in the second quarter of the year than in the first. The government is reportedly weighing a scheme to reduce insurance costs for shipping companies in an effort to bolster exports, but Oxford Economics said it expects the kingdom’s exports “to remain weak through the rest of this year”.

    Perhaps the biggest risk is uncertainty. The Iran conflict was relatively muted through much of August, but flared again in early September when Tehran and Washington exchanged fire. Saudi Arabia has not suffered as many hits from Iranian missiles as Bahrain, Kuwait or Jordan, but that could change.

    Investor test

    Against that backdrop, the push for economic diversification is as strong as ever. The Leap technology conference in August offered a sense of how things could develop. The Future Investment Initiative (FII) event in October will provide another litmus test of international investor appetite.

    Riyadh is trying to build momentum ahead of the event, releasing a list of speakers in late August that included BlackRock chief executive Laurence Fink, Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon and JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon.

    The past nine editions of FII have been a stage for billions of dollars in investment pledges – more than $50bn-worth of agreements were announced at last year’s event – but none has taken place against such a difficult geopolitical and macroeconomic backdrop. Riyadh’s policymakers will be hoping investors can look past the current crisis and provide further fillips for the economy.

    https://image.digitalinsightresearch.in/uploads/NewsArticle/19437579/main.gif
    Dominic Dudley
  • Saudi construction defies the headwinds

    7 September 2026

     

    Despite a geopolitical backdrop that has unsettled contractors and financiers alike, Saudi Arabia’s construction sector is on course for one of its strongest years on record.

    Contract awards in the kingdom’s construction sector hit $20bn in the first half of 2026, comfortably outpacing the $15bn recorded over the same period in 2025 and the roughly $17bn seen in the first half of 2024. These figures suggest that whatever recalibration the market has been going through, momentum is building again rather than fading.

    The rebound is notable given the conditions in which it is occurring. The conflict in the Gulf that began in February introduced a fresh layer of risk into investment decision-making, at precisely the moment the kingdom is trying to attract private capital into its construction sector.

    The major construction contracts awarded this year – including the Ministry of Defence headquarters, Rua Al-Madinah superblock 5, the Qiddiya racecourse, Qiddiya National Tennis Centre and Diriyah Waldorf Astoria superblock – suggest that awards have accelerated rather than stalled. This says as much about the underlying resilience of Saudi Arabia’s building programme as it does about the discipline with which it is now being managed.

    Procurement pivot

    The scale of the turnaround is easier to appreciate against the market’s recent trajectory. Construction contract awards fell 31% in 2025, dropping to $31bn from $45bn the year before, according to regional project tracker MEED Projects.

    That contraction followed the boom years of 2021-24, when the Public Investment Fund (PIF) and its gigaproject subsidiaries drove aggressive, broad-based growth across its five official gigaprojects and a raft of other Vision 2030 schemes.

    But 2025’s slowdown turned out to be a defining pivot. With the Finance Ministry projecting a budget deficit of SR165bn ($44bn) for 2026, Riyadh moved deliberately away from the scattergun procurement of the boom years and towards event-driven programmes with fixed deadlines: the 2034 Fifa World Cup, Expo 2030 Riyadh, and non-negotiable housing, healthcare and education commitments.

    The postponement of the 2029 Asian Winter Games at Trojena, along with the scaling back of The Line and the Mukaab, showed that even flagship gigaprojects are no longer immune to scrutiny. The H1 2026 figures suggest that this prioritisation exercise is now paying off, translating into a leaner but faster-moving pipeline of awards.

    Private delivery

    Central to the sector’s next phase is what PIF officials have termed ‘escape velocity’: the point at which real estate, tourism and social infrastructure are mature enough for private capital to take over primary funding and delivery, freeing PIF to focus on enabling rather than financing.

    That shift was formalised in April, when PIF’s board, chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, approved the fund’s 2026-30 strategy.

    While the 2021-25 phase was defined by rapid capital deployment and the launch of the gigaprojects, the new roadmap explicitly pivots towards value creation, investment efficiency and greater private sector participation, with PIF positioning itself increasingly as a platform creator and catalyst rather than the primary financier of every scheme.

    For construction, the implication is that the state is not stepping back from the transformation agenda, but expects the private sector – and public-private partnership (PPP) structures in particular – to carry a growing share of the delivery load.

    MEED’s coverage this year has tracked the expanding PPP pipeline overseen by the National Centre for Privatisation & PPP (NCP), which has around 200 projects in the pipeline worth roughly $190bn, spread across 17 sectors.

    Recent examples bear this out, including the State Properties General Authority and NCP tendering the Quality Valley Riyadh scheme, a 32-year mixed-use concession that drew expressions of interest from 59 firms.

    Elsewhere, the NCP is advancing a PPP to rehabilitate, operate and maintain 50 public parks across the Eastern Province, Jeddah and Medina. It has also selected preferred bidders to develop residential buildings at various land ports across the kingdom.

    Tendering has also started for the King Fahd suburb boulevard project in Dammam on a 43-year concession, and for the construction and operation of the Umm Al-Qura University Hospital in Mecca. Each of these projects is a marker of how far the model has extended beyond its traditional water and power roots.

    Market outlook

    For all the momentum of the past six months, the more striking number may be the one still ahead. MEED Projects data puts the value of construction projects in Saudi Arabia’s pipeline at more than $400bn, underscoring how much of the kingdom’s Vision 2030 build-out remains unawarded.

    Of that, around $65bn-worth of projects are currently at the bidding stage, a substantial near-term opportunity for contractors and PPP developers positioning themselves now.

    The longer-term picture is arguably more compelling still. As the private sector’s share of funding grows and PPP structures extend into new sectors, Saudi Arabia’s construction industry is being reshaped from a state-financed, volume-driven business into a more diversified, investment-grade market – one in which the $400bn still sitting in the pipeline represents a long runway of opportunity for contractors.

    https://image.digitalinsightresearch.in/uploads/NewsArticle/19436647/main.gif
    Yasir Iqbal