On December 27, 2009, Abu Dhabi contracted South Korean companies to build a four nuclear-reactor power plant, known as the Barakah plant (divine favour), with 5,600-megawatt capacity. Work started on the first unit in July 2012, and the four units entered full service in September 2024. Cost: $32 billion.
On May 17, 2026, during the US/Israel war against Iran, a drone strike on the Barakah plant, by Iran or its proxies, sparked fire in an electrical generator “outside the inner perimeter.” Deliberately or not, the strike effectively weaponized Barakah against the nearby cluster of giant desalination plants of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), with potentially harrowing human and environmental catastrophe.
To defuse the threat, Barakah must be phased out and replaced by nature’s safe, clean, and free-of-charge fuels, sun and air, instead of toxic uranium.
In what follows, I will describe the disasters at Three Mile Island in the United States (1979), Chernobyl in Ukraine (1986), and Fukushima Daiichi in Japan (2011) and significant radiation accidents since the 1950s. I will recall the abandonment of nuclear power plants in Austria, Germany and Switzerland and outline the dangers of storing nuclear waste. I will consider the dire consequences of a major radiation leak from Barakah on desalination plants. I will argue that this terrifying threat must be defused, replaced by renewable energy. I will end with an examination of the Abu Dhabi decision-making process that produced this monster.
Three Mile Island
On March 28, 1979, a partial reactor core meltdown at the Three Mile Island power plant in Pennsylvania severely damaged a brand new three months’ old reactor. The experts, who had argued that an accident like this could not happen, initially described it as a “minor malfunction.” Within days, 140,000 people had left the area. Radiation releases from the accident were contained, so that no perceptible effect on cancer incidence was observed, though one team of researchers contested these findings.
Cleanup of the accident took 14 years (August 1979-December 1993) and cost around $975 million. Initially, efforts focused on the cleanup and decontamination of the site. Starting in 1985, radioactive fuel was removed. The defueling process was completed in 1990. The damaged fuel was removed and disposed of in 1993. The contaminated cooling water that leaked into the containment building had seeped into the building’s concrete, leaving the radioactive residue impossible to remove. The accident dented the popularity of nuclear energy—from 1980 to 1984, 51 American nuclear reactors were cancelled.
Chernobyl
On April 26, 1986, a reactor at the Chernobyl plant in the Ukraine had a total meltdown. A plume was released into the atmosphere containing four hundred times more radioactive fallout than had been released by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Rain contaminated with radioactive material falling as far away as Ireland, 1,300 miles away. 600,000 people were exposed to high levels of radiation. Over 336,000 people were evacuated and resettled. Farming and other types of agricultural industry would be dangerous for at least 200 years in a large area, and it would be at least 20,000 years before the site of the meltdown were safe.
Fukushima Daiichi Disaster
The 9.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Fukushima was on March 11, 2011. The catastrophe was rated 7, the highest rating on the International Nuclear Event Scale, indicating widespread contamination with serious health and environmental effects. The Tsunami that followed, caused all six reactors to be scrapped a process that will require years and monumental expense to complete. In 2016, estimate from Japan’s trade ministry put the expected cost at some 20 trillion yen ($180 billion).
Significant nuclear accidents since the 1950s
Scores of serious nuclear plant accidents with multiple fatalities and/or more than US$100 million in property damage afflicted this industry since the 1950s, from the Soviet Union (2 incidents), to the United Kingdom (1), the United States (13), Switzerland (1), Germany (2), Czechoslovakia (1), France (2), Ukraine (1), Brazil (1), Spain (1), Japan (3), Hungary (1), and Sweden (1). Also, hundreds of less-serious incidents occurred since 1952 in these and other countries.
The dangers of nuclear waste disposal
Even if Barakah’s four reactors operate perfectly, there will be the grim task of safely disposing of its toxic waste. Reactor waste is radioactive and must be isolated from the biosphere until the radioactivity has diminished to a safe level for a very long time (100 years to tens of thousands of years). Special physical, chemical, and thermal characteristics must be met before a burial site is deemed suitable for the decaying radioactive waste.
An earthquake, a volcano, or some other natural disaster might force the decaying waste up to the Earth’s surface. In the Soviet Union, waste stored in Lake Karachay was blown over the area in the spring of 1968 as the lake began to dry up, and the wind carried away a substantial volume of radioactive dust, irradiating half a million people. At Maxey Flat, Kentucky, between 1963 and 1977, containment trenches of a low-level radioactive waste facility started collapsing under heavy rainfall and became radioactive. In France, in 2008, at the Areva plant in Tricastin, liquid containing untreated uranium overflowed out of a faulty tank and about 75 kg of the radioactive material seeped into the ground and, from there, into two nearby rivers. In the United Kingdom, the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo at the Sellafield nuclear site could continue leaking radioactive water until the 2050s.
Phasing out nuclear power plants in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria
In reaction to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, Germany announced on May 30, 2011, that it would shut down all 17 nuclear reactors by 2022. A week earlier, Switzerland, where 40% of electricity is nuclear generated announced that it would shut down its reactors by 2034. Thirty-three years before the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, a referendum in Austria on November 5, 1978, abandoned the commissioning of the just completed Zwentendorf Nuclear Power plant on the Danube River near Vienna. In December 1978, the National Assembly passed a law prohibiting the use of nuclear energy in Austria.
The Abu Dhabi regime, on the other hand, found it acceptable to start the construction of Barakah’s Unit 1 in July 2012, 15 months after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.
The dangers of a serious radiation leak on desalination plants
In a conflict-ridden Middle East, desalination plants are vulnerable to two types of risk. The first is a direct bombing to disable a specific single plant. The second is a release of radioactive materials into the environment from a Barakah reactor due to a design fault, human error, natural disaster, sabotage, or accidental bombing that disables multiple desalination plants simultaneously.
There are ~400 desalination plants on the GCC Coast of the Arabian Peninsula. They supply ~20 million cubic meters per day (m3/day) of drinking and household water to the ~45 million inhabitants in the forbidding arid deserts of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman, and Saudi Arabia (Eastern Province, Qasim region, Riyadh). Five of the world’s largest plants are between 160 and 350 air miles Northeast and Northwest of the Barakah plant: Ras Al Khair in Saudi Arabia, (capacity, 1,036,000 m3/day), Taweelah in UAE, (909,200 m3/day), Umm Al Houl in Qatar (894,000 m3/day), Jubail in Saudi Arabia, (800,000 m3 /day), Umm Al Quwain in UAE, (682,900 m3/day). In Iran, 95 operational plants in 2023 desalinated ~0.6 million m3/day.
No GCC state possesses the hospitals and staff to cope with a sudden and unexpected arrival of thousands of casualties. Airports and ports will be irradiated. Evacuation of people from cities bordered by the forbidding Empty Quarter Desert on the west and a contaminated sea to the east will be unthinkable.
Even if the probability of such a disaster is infinitesimally small, prudence demands that the Barakah plant be shut down, replaced by nature’s safe, clean, and free-of-charge fuels, sun and air, instead of toxic uranium.
The case for solar and wind farms
A decade before the construction of Barakah’s Unit 1 started, solar and wind technologies were available on a commercial scale. Indeed, the Arabian Desert could have provided Abu Dhabi with endless free-of-charge sun and wind to generate all the electricity it desired safely and competitively. Instead, toxic and expensive uranium was chosen.
The four-year period 2005–2008 had seen unprecedented gains in the development of renewable energy. Grid-connected Photovoltaic (PV) capacity increased six-fold, to 13 gigawatts; wind power capacity increased 250% to 121 gigawatts, and total power capacity increased 75% to 280 gigawatts.
Despite the global banking meltdown and the economic downturn of 2008, a remarkable milestone was that renewables represented more than 50% of total added power capacity in both the United States and Europe, more than the new capacity for gas, coal, oil, and nuclear combined.
Solar power
Using a technology known as Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) built between 1984 and 1990 the world’s largest commercially successful solar power generating network in California’s Mojave Desert. CSP relies on mirrors or lenses to heat water to drive steam generators. SEGS is composed of nine plants covering more than 900,000 mirrors over 1,600 acres. It generates 354 megawatts, sufficient to meet the electricity demand of more than 230,000 homes at peak production during the day.
In 2008, photovoltaic technology was introduced on a commercial scale. Photovoltaics is the direct conversion of light into electricity. Some materials exhibit a property that causes them to absorb photons of light and release electrons. When these free electrons are captured, this creates electric current. PV cells are constructed of two thin layers of semi-conducting materials (usually silicon) that have been treated chemically. When sunlight hits the PV cells, it creates an electric field across the two layers.
Completed in July 2008, the largest PV power plant was the Olmedilla Photovoltaic Park in Spain, a 60 megawatt facility (meeting the electricity needs of more than 40,000 homes). Also, in 2008, three similar plants were built in Spain, one in Portugal, and one in Germany.
Wind power
Wind power is the conversion of wind energy using wind turbines to make electricity. A 2005 study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research found that wind power could satisfy up to seven times the world’s electricity needs.
In 2008, wind power accounted for 42% of new capacity additions in the United States and for 36% of new installations in Europe. As of May 2009, 80 countries around the world were using wind power on a commercial basis. In 2008, China installed approximately 6,300 megawatts, doubling the nation’s cumulative wind capacity for the fourth year in a row. In the UK, the windiest country in Europe, wind power could generate almost 3 times the amount of electricity the country uses. In January 2009, UK’s wind turbines had the capacity to prevent the emission of 3.7 million tons of carbon dioxide.
In case Abu Dhabi sees the wisdom of converting Barakah to a wind farm, the UK and EU may provide guidance. They are collaborating on a massive rollout of joint offshore wind farms in the North Sea to generate at least 120 gigawatts of wind energy by 2030 and at least 300 gigawatts of energy by the middle of the century. The plans were announced on April 24, 2023, by the French President, German chancellor, and EU commission chief. 120 gigawatts is the equivalent of 120 nuclear power plants of a sizeable 1 gigawatt each.
The case for abandoning nuclear power plants
On accounts of safety, cost, and time to build, nuclear energy should be abandoned.
The excellent safety record of solar and wind generated electricity should apply to nuclear energy. Experience suggests, however, that the nuclear industry cannot even come remotely close to such a high bar.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) in 2023 for nuclear power was estimated at $110/megawatt hour (MWh) and forecast to remain the same up to 2050, while solar PV was estimated to be $55/MWh in 2023 and expected to decline to $25/MWh in 2050. Onshore wind was $40/MWh in 2023 and expected to decline to $35/MWh in 2050. Similar trends were observed in the report for EU, China, and India. Clearly, renewables are significantly less expensive than nuclear energy.
A nuclear power plant takes on average about 14-1/2 years, from the planning phase to operation. Wind and solar farms, on the other hand, take on average two to five years, from the planning phase to operation. The time saving of green energy versus nuclear energy is irrefutable.
Abu Dhabi’s decision-making process
Abu Dhabi’s decision to build a huge nuclear power plant when safer and less expensive renewable energy alternatives existed is confounding. How was this decision made?
Political governance in the UAE is autocratic, non-representative, non-participatory, and non-transparent. In 2009, Khalifa bin Zayid al-Nahyan was Ruler of Abu Dhabi and President of the UAE. The power behind the throne, however, was his egotistical adventurous half-brother, Muhammad, Crown Prince since 2004, Ruler of Abu Dhabi and President of the UAE after the death of Khalifa in 2022.
Abu Dhabi, like the other six Emirates in the UAE, and the six GCC member states, is an absolute monarchy. The ruler is the law maker and the law breaker. It has no parliament, political parties, free press, or egalitarian environmental organizations. A lawless vicious security machine delivers blind obedience of the populace to the chief.
Corruption is the glue that keeps the ruling group together. Obscenely huge illicit commissions are plundered by local agents, often members of the ruling clans, from white elephant projects. The sanctioned national discourse at home and, lobbyists abroad turn disastrous ventures, like the Barakah plant, into judicious strategies complete with loud nationalistic slogans.
Under such conditions, it is impossible to introduce a balancing perspective into energy policy, be it regarding national security, the economy, or the environment. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Abu Dhabi leader decided to build a four-reactor nuclear plant next door to archenemy Iran. He dismissed the religious and political conflicts between Arab Sunni GCC and Persian Shi’ite Iran since the 1979 Khomeini Revolution. Also, oblivious he was to Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran (1980-1988), which Abu Dhabi financed along with other GCC states to protect them from Khomeini’s ambitions. Furthermore, he ignored UAE’s own dispute with Tehran since the Shah of Iran seized on November 30, 1971, three islands near the Strait of Hormuz, Abu Musa; claimed by the Emirate of Sharjah, Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb; claimed by Ras al-Khaima.
The brew behind Abu Dhabi’s environmental vandalism
Egotism, eccentricity, ignorance, and the arrogance of money added Barakah to UAE’s environmental vandalism. Behind its ruler’s penchant for political adventurism and outlandish extravaganza lurk rivalry and contempt towards GCC neighbors over, for example, who has the tallest building, biggest airline, largest airport, richest museum, and who built in the blazing desert sun the biggest indoor air-conditioned theme park, indoor skiing and skating rink, golf course, let alone the $40 billion Yas Island leisure and entertainment spectacle near Abu Dhabi’s airport, which outshines in cost the $32 billion Barakah.
The main target of Abu Dhabi ruler’s rivalry and jealousy is Saudi Arabia. By virtue of its size, wealth, and the location of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia is the dominant power in the GCC. In a direct challenge to the Saudi King, when Riyadh was chosen on May 6, 2009, to be the headquarters of the Gulf Monetary Union (GCC’s new Central Bank), the UAE left the proposed monetary union on May 21, 2009. It insisted that Abu Dhabi must host the new institution. In this action, Abu Dhabi scuttled what could have been the single most important historic achievement of the GCC since its formation twenty-eight years earlier.
The Barakah plant was born to a tribal governance enjoying rentier economic circumstances. The drone strike on May 17, 2026, deliberately or not, must awaken every GCC ruler to the national security risks perpetrated by Abu Dhabi’s ruler.
Barakah must be shut down.
It must be added to Abu Dhabi’s fleet of museums.
Sun and air must trump uranium.