Saudi Arabia is embarking on an ambitious program to develop peaceful nuclear energy that will have profound positive impacts on the energy industry and wider economy. According to the Ministry of Energy, Saudi Arabia is committed to a far-reaching nuclear energy program that will result in the construction of the Kingdom’s first nuclear power plants. This program will help to diversify the energy resources of the kingdom and generate an important clean energy source that diversifies the energy mix and helps power the growth of Saudi Arabia over the coming decades.
But developing a nuclear energy program will do something much more important than increase the Kingdom’s clean energy capacity. Nuclear energy, like petroleum energy before it, will provide educational opportunities for Saudi youth and develop the country’s future technology leaders. The post-war economy had just begun booming, but the world was missing one key ingredient to scale global industrialization: inexpensive and abundant energy. That year, two American energy pioneers were half a world apart, developing drastically different approaches to securing potential energy sources: oil and nuclear energy. In America, engineer and future US Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover joined the newly formed Atomic Energy Commission’s Division of Nuclear Development, tasked with developing a safe and reliable energy source: the nuclear reactor. In Saudi Arabia, another American, geologist Thomas Barger, was in the Eastern Province following his Bedouin guides and trekking through what is today the Ghawar Field, preparing the oil-rich land for commercial use by what is today Saudi Aramco. Both men succeeded in their missions.
Rickover trained Americans and Aramco educated Saudis proved to be some of their respective country’s most important leaders over the past decades. These include Jimmy Carter, a former American president who started his career in Rickover’s nuclear energy program, and Ali Al-Naimi, Aramco’s first Saudi president and CEO, who was educated in the Aramco system. The Saudi Arabia’s nuclear energy future provides an opportunity to build future through human capital in the form of education to build a cadre of intelligent, well-rounded, and visionary Saudi citizens that power the nation’s future just as much as nuclear reactors will.
Saudi students already set themselves apart globally through robust Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, or STEM, programs, and Saudi youth are making gains in STEM education and career fields. It is particularly noteworthy that according to the Ministry of Education, Saudi women make up the majority of STEM degree earners. The Atlantic Council has noted that Saudi female participation in technology careers exceeds European averages by more than 10 percent.
