Construction of 1st reactors of Dabaa plant in Egypt to start next July: Rosatom

CAIRO - 19 January 2022:  Construction of the first power unit at the El-Dabaa nuclear power plant in Egypt, with the participation of Russia, is scheduled to start next July, according to the CEO of the Russian energy company Rosatom, Alexey Likhachev.

According to Likhachev, the construction of the Egyptian Dabaa nuclear plant is scheduled to begin in July 2022, and he said that the Egyptian authorities are looking forward to starting construction work in the summer of this year.

Last December, the head of the Nuclear Power Plants Authority in Egypt, Amgad Al-Wakeel, said that the Dabaa nuclear plant would be operating at a full capacity of 4,800 megawatts by 2030.

In statements to Egyptian media, he indicated that the first nuclear reactor with a capacity of 1,200 megawatts will be operated to generate electricity according to the schedule of the commercial project in 2020, pointing out that the rest of the reactors will be operated successively to be operated at their full capacity in 2030.

In December 2017, Egypt and Russia signed an agreement to start work on the El Dabaa nuclear plant project.

It is noteworthy that Russia and Egypt signed in November 2015 an agreement on cooperation in the field of building and operating the first nuclear power plant in Egypt with Russian technology, worth $26 billion, to build a four-unit nuclear plant.

The agreement includes the construction of a nuclear plant in the Dabaa region, comprising 4 units, each with a capacity of 1,200 megawatts. The construction of the nuclear plant is expected to be completed within 12 years, according to the company's statement.

The project is scheduled to generate net revenues of $264 billion for the state treasury over 60 years, which is the lifespan of the reactors used at the plant.