MOSCOW, January 18. /TASS/. The construction of the El Dabaa nuclear power plant (NPP) in Egypt is expected to begin in July 2022, Director General of Russia’s state-run nuclear corporation Rosatom Alexey Likhachev has told Russian journalists.
"They [the Egyptian authorities] are set to do everything to carry out the initial concreting this summer, tentatively in July," he said.
In early January, Rosatom handed over documents for El Dabaa Units 3 and 4 to the Egyptian Nuclear and Radiological Regulatory. Authority (ENRRA). According to the state corporation, the package of documents was submitted ahead of schedule, and, as soon as the permission is obtained, the sides can begin full-scale construction.
The El Dabaa nuclear power plant will be the first nuclear power plant in Egypt. It will be built in El-Dabaa city in the Governorate of Matrouh on the coastlines of the Mediterranean Sea. The El Dabaa NPP will comprise four units, with each of them having a capacity of 1200 MW, equipped with a Generation III+ VVER-1200 reactor, considered to be the latest technology for nuclear power plants, which has already been successfully implemented in other countries.
Russia and Egypt signed an intergovernmental agreement on the construction of the country's first nuclear power plant in Cairo in November 2015. The total cost of construction is $30 billion. The parties also signed an agreement to provide Egypt with a state export loan of $25 billion for the construction of the nuclear power plant, which will cover 85% of the work. The remaining expenses should be covered by the Egyptian side by attracting private investors. Under the agreement Egypt is to start payments on the loan, which was provided at 3% per annum, in October 2029.