Middle East & North Africa

In the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2021, Mariana Budjeryn writes about the Chernobyl disaster 35 years later, while Ali Ahmad writes about nuclear power and climate change resilience.

A Middle East-wide forum could facilitate dialogue and transparency on a range of short-term measures, engendering momentum to then take on other more complex items, such as regional arms control.

Ali Ahmad joins the "SAT Talks" podcast for a discussion of the UAE's move toward nuclear energy and how energy policy at the national, regional, and global levels impacts the future of the Gulf region. 

In the highly charged political atmosphere surrounding nuclear initiatives in the Middle East, legitimate concerns are sometimes blown out of proportion, with potentially problematic results. This has been the case with recent coverage and commentary on Saudi Arabia’s nuclear activities, which have been characterized by a degree of what can be described as “threat inflation.”

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt are following the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Iran in pursuing nuclear power. In a war-torn region where tensions are rising there is concern about where this may lead, even though it is not clear if these projects will ever be realized. Although the Barakah project marks a paradigm shift toward energy diversification in the region, the UAE’s results on the nuclear front may not be easily replicated.

Rebecca Davis Gibbons writes that having a full appreciation of the consequences of nuclear weapons and their place in society means learning from the stories of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—but also from the stories from other survivors of nuclear explosions: those who lived and worked adjacent to testing sites in Algeria, French Polynesia, Australia, the United States, France, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Western China, and Kazakhstan.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has published a document from the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs concerning nuclear problems and tensions in the time of COVID-19. The document has been co-signed by a large number of Pugwash colleagues and personalities.