Trump Submits Saudi Nuclear Pact to Congress Without IAEA Safeguards
A 123 Agreement creating a pathway for uranium enrichment cooperation with Riyadh heads to Congress, bypassing safeguards included in prior US civil nuclear deals.
The Trump administration was set on Monday (2026-07-21) to submit to Congress a nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia that omits the safeguard requirements standard in such pacts, Reuters reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. The move would grant Riyadh access to nuclear fuel cycle cooperation without the non-proliferation conditions that similar US civil nuclear agreements have included.4
The URA uranium equity ETF fell 3.71% to $38.80 on Tuesday (2026-07-28), one of the sharpest sector moves of the session. Equities retreated even as a US-Saudi civil nuclear partnership would, in principle, create fresh demand for enriched uranium fuel. That divergence suggests investors see the political and proliferation risks attached to this deal as outweighing the demand upside.4
The document, formally a 123 Agreement under US atomic energy law, would be signed by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi energy minister Abdulaziz bin Salman. One source told Reuters the administration planned to submit it as early as Wednesday (2026-07-23); a second source expected submission within roughly a week of Monday's (2026-07-21) report.4
The text would not require Riyadh to adopt the strengthened control mechanisms of the International Atomic Energy Agency, CNN reported on Friday (2026-07-18), citing its own sources. Standard US civil nuclear deals, the so-called gold standard arrangements Washington has pushed globally, have typically required a commitment not to enrich uranium or reprocess spent fuel domestically. This agreement does not carry that condition.3,4
But one Reuters source said the pact does provide a legal pathway for cooperation on the nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium enrichment, without obligating Washington to actually transfer any enrichment capabilities or technology to Riyadh. That distinction matters to negotiators but may not satisfy critics. Under US atomic energy law, Congress has 90 days to review and potentially reject the agreement after it is submitted.4
The question of what nuclear programs generate and leave behind runs through the wider debate. Experts testifying before a public inquiry on Friday (2026-07-24) said Australia's planned nuclear submarine fleet under the AUKUS partnership will leave behind tonnes of highly enriched uranium, material that is both weapons-usable and radioactive for hundreds of millions of years. No nation has resolved how to manage spent HEU, the experts said, and the timeframes involved make any guarantee about its security speculative.5
The US military faces its own nuclear legacy costs. The House National Defense Authorization Act, as of its reporting on Tuesday (2026-05-26), would authorize $7.2 billion for military environmental cleanup and $246.9 million for restoration at formerly used Pentagon sites, above the amount the administration had requested. The same legislation proposed more than $615 million for the Pentagon's Energy Resilience and Conservation Investment Program across seven states and Puerto Rico. It was unclear as of Tuesday (2026-07-28) whether the NDAA had advanced further. The bill addresses liabilities already incurred. It does not specify where future spent nuclear fuel ultimately goes.1
Colorado illustrates how durable the civilian version of that problem is. The state holds roughly 33,000 pounds of nuclear waste stored outside Denver, legacy material from the Fort St. Vrain reactor. St. Vrain generated commercial power only about 15% of the time it was in service, according to a study by New York state utility officials, leaving behind substantial waste for limited output.2
Wright has made civil nuclear exports a strategic priority, and Saudi Arabia has long sought domestic enrichment capability as a precondition for any cooperation. Congress will now weigh whether the commercial and diplomatic case for the Saudi deal justifies dropping conditions that prior administrations treated as non-negotiable. The agreement's precise language on enrichment limits, once the text is formally submitted, will be the first signal of whether any safeguards survived the negotiation.4,3