ST. PETERSBURG, September 4. /TASS/. Production of the reactor pressure vessel for Unit No. 1 at Egypt’s first El Dabaa nuclear power plant was launched in St. Petersburg at Rosatom’s production site, Alexey Likhachev, General Director of the Russian major nuclear power corporation Rosatom, said on Saturday when giving green light to the production.

"The nuclear power plant that will operate in Egypt will not only provide the country with green and sustainable energy in the next 100 years. For Egypt, it is the birth of an entire sector, a whole industry and an absolutely new level of quality of knowledge and quality of life. That is why today we are launching not only a reactor, but we are launching a new life, a new image of this life in Egypt," Likhachev said.

The construction of the El Dabaa NPP began on July 20, 2022. It will be located on the Mediterranean coast, about 300 km northwestward of Cairo. The plant will consist of four power units with a capacity of 1,200 MW each. Russia and Egypt signed the intergovernmental agreement on the construction of the NPP in Cairo in November 2015. Egypt expects that the NPP will operate at full capacity by 2030.

Currently, Rosatom has a backlog of foreign orders for construction of 34 units in eleven countries.