IGA also regulates questions of SNF treatment, NPP personnel training, assistance to Egypt in the improvement of standards and regulations in the sphere of nuclear power industry and nuclear infrastructure.
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Sisi noted that since the unfortunate incident, Egypt has been cooperating with Russian Federation and other countries involved and that “our cooperation stresses that we are dealing with it with utmost transparency and responsibility as the lives of people is of utmost importance”.
Egypt’s Minister of Electricity Mohamed Shaker said nuclear power has always been a “dream” in Egypt, which had plans to build one in the 1980s that were cancelled after the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl.
While the value of the deal is not clear, Sisi said the loan from Russian Federation would be paid off over 35 years.
The deal comes three weeks after a Russian airliner crashed over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 on board.
Sergey Kiriyenko, general director of Rosatom, said the Dabaa nuclear plant will be the largest Russian-Egyptian project since the Aswan High Dam and will mark a “new chapter” in bilateral relations between the countries.
Egypt, with a population of 90 million and vast energy requirements, is seeking to diversify its energy sources. The plant is to be built in Dabaa on the Mediterranean coast in the northwest of the country.
Sisi have always reiterated that power is a key in developing Egypt, reviving its ailing economy and eventually creating job opportunities. “Rather, the cost will be repaid out of the real energy production that will be generated from the station”, he said, according to a statement on Egypt’s State Information Service.
The plant is supposed to have four power-generating units, each of them with an output capacity of 1,200 megawatts, it added. The first two reactors will operate in 2025, the third in 2026 and the fourth reactor will generate electricity at the beginning of 2027.
“The country will not bear the cost of building this plant”.
“Generally speaking the revenues of any nuclear plant, even funded by Egypt, will cover its original construction costs in 10 years after its operation”, he added.
Sisi accordingly said that Egypt has undertaken a wide range of procedures to upgrade security checks at airports and harbors.
For Moscow, the Egypt award cements its position as the dominant nuclear power provider in the region.
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According to Rosatom’s profile on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the company was a leader of the United States dollars 500 billion global nuclear energy market in 2014, “building 37% of all new reactors in the world”.
