If you think your electricity bill is bad, you should see the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’s. Having to import 95% of your energy makes for a fairly expensive monthly bill. In response to this ongoing electricity and energy challenge, Jordan has signed a 10 year agreement with Russia for the provision of four new nuclear power plants, desalination stations and related research facilities.
“The signed agreement is the beginning of major strategic cooperation between the two countries. We intend to cooperate in the construction of nuclear power plants… and plan to build four plants in Jordan in the coming decades,” according to head of Russia’s Rosatom nuclear corporation Sergei Kiriyenko.
Jordanian Atomic Energy Commission chief Khaled Toukan told reporters
“We have started negotiations on various areas of cooperation, but the most important of them is the construction of a nuclear power plant for production of electric power, and of a desalination station.”
Part of the agreement also includes a uranium exploration partnership between the two countries. As Jordan looks to diversify its energy production, it will continue to sign further natural resource agreements, similar to its 2008 agreement to allow Shell to survey and develop nearly one quarter of Jordan in order to access about 40 billion tonnes of oil shale.
Image credit: mandj98 via Flickr, under a Creative Commons license.
While I do agree with the use of nuclear power for generation, I’m wondering why a place that has a lot of great solar would bother with Russian Nuclear in the first place… Look to what Spain is doing with Solar, Jordan should follow Spain.
Europe is going 100% renewables from wind and the Sun by 2050, in a road map called Roadmap2050Europe, and the Middle East is going nuclear, what a shame!Nuclear is not a sustainable source of energy, much like fossil fuel, as Uranium deposits will be scarse by Mid-century. By 2050, both resources will be depleted, what are the Gulf states going to do?
I’m just sick to my stomach by this disaster. Where can I find an probable assessment of the accurate size of the spill? The assessments are all over the place. Thanks for your informative post.