The Wall Street Journal reports new details of a Trump administration
civil-nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia, submitted to U.S. Congress last week,
outline a roadmap under which Saudi Arabia could, after further consultations,
pursue domestic uranium enrichment up to about 20%. That enrichment level could
fuel small modular reactors but would raise the risk of diversion to military
use. Scott Rock, a former DOE official and vice chair of the Nuclear Threat
Initiative, said the level is defensible for civilian use but that reaching it
would mean most of the work toward producing weapons-grade material is already
done.
