The photo is sourced from rosatom.ru
The ceremony was attended by Amged El-Wakil, the Chairman of the Nuclear Power Plants Authority (NPPA) of Egypt; Sami Atalla, the Chairman of the Nuclear and Radiation Control Department of Egypt and Khaled Shuaib, the Governor of the Matrouh Province.
The first NPP in Egypt will be built 300 km away from Cairo on the Mediterranean coast. The power plant will consist of four 1.2 GW power units. The units will be equipped with VVER-1200 pressurised water reactors of the 3+ generation. Four reactors of this generation have already been operating in Russia (two at the Novovoronezh NPP and two at the Leningrad NPP); one more reactor is installed at the Belarusian NPP connected to the power grid in November 2020.
“The start of construction of the El-Dabaa NPP first power unit means that Egypt has joined the world nuclear club. Rosatom will build the most modern power units under the VVER-1200 project in the Arab Republic of Egypt. We have already accumulated experience in the construction and operation of NPPs with such reactors both in Russia and abroad,” Rosatom quotes in its press release Alexei Likhachev, Director General of the state corporation. “The nuclear power plant construction will allow Egypt to reach a new level of technology, industry and education,” he said.
After implementation of this project, Egypt will become the second African country with operating nuclear power units. The only country of this kind on the continent so far is South Africa, where two nuclear reactors with a combined capacity of 1.9 GW provided 6% of power generation in 2021 (12 out of 202 TWh, according to the Nuclear Power Reactor Information System). The project will also enable Egypt to expand the pool of low-carbon energy sources, which accounted for only 12% of power generation in 2021 (with the share of gas and oil products 13% and 75%, respectively).
