It’s even richer than that, energy is the department he forgot:
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Ah remember when a gaff could derail your shot at the presidency? Howard Dean remembers. Rick Perry remembers. Donald Trump…wait, what happened?
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I’m aware of that, and was enjoying some light piquant understatement …
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My guess is enrichment technologies.
Light water reactors aren’t good for plutonium production, but they do need enriched uranium. If you can enrich uranium to 5% for fuel, you can enrich to 90% for a bomb.
Light water reactors are already in the Gulf in Iran (a Rosatom VVER at Bushehr with two more to follow) and in the UAE (four KEPCO PWRs at Barakah, one finished, three under construction). But in each case the agreement was to supply fuel from outside the region, to store irradiated spent fuel and then remove it from the region.
I suspect the Saudis have demanded control of the fuel cycle and the US, desperate for a deal, has agreed.
The alternatives don’t make much sense. The US doesn’t have a history of natural uranium fuelled reactors - either graphite moderated like the UK Magnox, or the heavy water designs like Canada’s CANDU - both of which are capable of churning out bomb-grade plutonium by the tonne. So I’d disagree with you that giving them access to CANDU would be a good idea, that’s the route India took to obtain plutonium for their first bomb.
Likewise, light-water reactors have long burn times and don’t produce bomb-grade plutonium, so I don’t think it is about reprocessing spent fuel.
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You are correct. I wrote that wrong. Thank you for the correction
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Hey, it should hurry along the apocalypse and the second coming right? Isn’t that the whole idea here? And besides, if a bunch of Arabs and Persians get vaporized, that is just icing on the cake! (I say this sarcastically, but the trumpkins would probably look at that as a serious argument. 
)
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So Perry is selling our (USian) stuff to foreign nations secretly ?
That doesn’t seem right.
I wouldn’t speak for all Israelis, but Netanyahu and many of his political allies there foolishly see the House of Saud as a “friend” of “the enemy of my enemy” variety whose worst anti-Semitic impulses will kept in check by the U.S. (until Iran is dealt with, after which they can shift their attention to KSA as an enemy).
Ultra-nationalism and religious fundamentalism lead to such deranged calculations.
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Oh sure, but he forced TerraPower to cancel their demo TWR reactor in China.
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Lonesome Rhodes Syndrome doesn’t apply to in this altered dimension.
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Crap. You are right about the candu reactors
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Getting rid of the department of education.
Because he’s an actual shit-for-brains.
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Lol… like anyone cares about education over certification…
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He’s a republican. All he cares about is nepotism.
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I beg to differ, but all he cares about is white men… but I’m probably wrong, not being one of those.
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I cannot think of anything that would make Iran want to faster pursue nuclear weapons (and break the Iran Deal) than Saudi Arabia getting nuclear technology and, with it, the implication of nuclear weapons development.
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What could possibly go wrong?
Well, one of my favourite euphemisms from the 1980ies is begrenzter nuklearer Schlagabtausch.
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