There have been rumblings for some time that the Kingdom was looking toward developing nuclear capacity for civilian use. The announcement by King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, that he has issued a royal decree for the King Abdullah City of Atomic and Renewable Energy is a revolutionary step that will help reduce the Kingdom's reliance on petroleum for its energy while prolonging the existence of such non-renewable energy supplies. Although the Kingdom has been blessed with comparatively massive reserves of oil, we are all aware that oil and other fossil fuels ultimately will play a finite role in human life. Efforts to find other viable energy sources are well under way, sparked mainly by the inevitable pollution and consequent global warming that stems from our wide use of oil and the simple fact that the world will indeed deplete its oil supplies sometime in the next couple of hundred years. By placing focus on employing nuclear energy to generate electricity and to de-salinate water for drinking, the Kingdom will take a tremendous leap toward lessening its own dependence on petroleum while generating thousands of jobs for locally-trained skilled workers. Undoubtedly, there will be a foreign element in the construction and maintenance of the atomic energy city but there are high expectations that much of the work can be done using graduates from the Nuclear Engineering Department at King Abdulaziz University. This will be an excellent opportunity to diversify the employment market in the Kingdom while, long-term, diversifying the entire economy. Although the neighboring UAE has already begun its own nuclear program, the establishment of King Abdullah City of Atomic and Renewable Energy will serve as a beacon for other countries in the region to reduce their own dependence on oil and break new ground economically as the cost of energy inevitably decreases. It is just another step along the road toward the Kingdom cementing its leadership in the region. __
