Thread by @energybants

ANOTHER ONE

And just like that, the UAE doubles its number of online reactors: second unit at Barakah goes critical.

From a wild dream in 2006 to reality a few years later.

There's nothing like nuclear for decarbonization and development.

world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Secon…

The magnitude of this achievement should not be overlooked.

In 2006, the UAE was taking a reputational beating in the USA because of the Dubai Ports World controversy.

A Dubai-based seaport operating company was negotiating to provide its services to US ports.

Giant "scandal."

It was clear that UAE was not trusted as an responsible international partner.

During this, a chance encounter led to a singular idea rising in the minds of UAE's leaders: if they got a nuclear program, they could decarbonize while gaining a reputation of highest trust.

Carefully & rapidly assembling their program, UAE shocked the nuclear world by choosing first-time exporter South Korea over intense pitches from France, USA, and Japan.

South Korea hadn't even been initially considered!

A desert visit to the incredible Palo Verde changed that.

But Palo Verde is one of the crown jewels of the AMERICAN fleet! How could a visit convince UAE to go with the Koreans?

Well, as South Korea was deciding in 1986 which reactor to bet their nation's future on, they chose Combustion Engineering, partly because of a crucial point:

Combustion Engineering, makers of the System-80 design used at Palo Verde, agreed to grant South Korea royalty-free use of their intellectual property for any plants built by Korea OUTSIDE of Korea.

Probably the deciding factor in choosing this path:

Korea had big ambitions.

After UAE announced that they were partnering with South Korea, rumors swirled about why the least-experienced exporter had been chosen. In the end, it's because Korea was building the most reactors at home, offered the most competitive price, and finally, the most unified bid.

That meant that the reactor designer, builder, engineer/architect, etc were all part of the same group, under a head of state dedicated to the national success of Korean exports.

But after Korea won the bid and started building, a viciously anti-nuclear president was elected.

Rapidly, Korean bids to build more reactors in other countries started falling apart.

At home, Korea's executive cancelled reactor construction and used methods both legal and illegal to force-close operating nuclear reactors, replacing the power with imported fossil fuels.

Through it all, the UAE held steady, building up its own regulator, training operators, and just basically getting ready to become a nuclear-powered nation.

Barakah is due to replace a quarter of national electricity emissions. That's just ONE power plant.

Now little girls and boys are growing up dreaming of becoming nuclear operators at their own country's nuclear power plant.

The experience of building Barakah has been transformative to the people of the UAE in ways that have been ignored by the outside world.

I'm ashamed as an American how the nuclear program has been received by our media, at least on the left.

The New York Times, copying the editorial line of UAE's regional rival Qatar, which chose to stick with fossil for energy, covered UAE's nuclear launch as a "security" story.

In their coverage, the NY Times quoted Qatar and Greenpeace-funded anti-nuclear troll Paul Dorfman, while mentioning 'carbon', 'climate change', and 'energy security' zero times each.

It truly reveals NYT's unseriousness about climate reporting.

nytimes.com/2020/08/01/wor…

So the biggest clean energy story in the world was reported by USA's national paper of record as a dog-whistle racist terrorism and quarreling Arabs story.

No shock that NYTimes stood by as all of NYC's clean energy was replaced by oil and gas this year!

https://twitter.com/bagga_sid/status/1400170971823185920

The story of Barakah is just beginning, and stands as a model of best practices in building a national clean energy strategy.

It will have taken about ten years in construction to provide 4 x 1400MW, 50 TWh per year, for a century.

Stay tuned as more reactors turn on next year!