El-Debaa nuclear power plant in Egypt will receive a reliable supply of fuel once it is built following the announcement that Russia will supply nuclear fuel components including uranium and aluminium items to Egypt for a period of 10 years, following an agreement signed between the Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority and Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant (NCCP), a subsidiary of Russia’s Rosatom TVEL.
“The business development expectations in Egypt include the supply of nuclear fuel to all four power units of the planned 4,800MW El-Debaa nuclear power plant for its entire operation period,” says Rosatom TVEL on a statement.
The fuel components will mainly be used in Egypt’s ETTR-2 research reactor, located at a nuclear research facility in Inshas, Egypt’s Sharqiya governorate. ETTR-2 focuses on the research of particle physics and material studies, as well as the production of radioisotopes’
Oleg Grigoriyev, the senior vice-president for commerce and international business at Rosatom TVEL said that the long-term contract is a follow-up to a number of contractual documents for shipments of fuel components to Egypt which were successfully fulfilled by NCCP in the past three years.
Egypt’s first nuclear power plant
El-Debaa nuclear power plant in Egypt is the first nuclear power plant planned in the country. The plant will be developed by the North African country in conjunction with Russia at El Dabaa, Matrouh Governorate on the Mediterranean coast.
The initial agreement for the project was signed in 2015 by the governments of both countries. The following year, they signed another agreement for a US$25bn loan to cover 85% of the project cost. Egypt is to repay the loan in 43 installments over 22 years with a 3% interest rate, starting in October 2029.
The final agreements and notice to proceed (NTP) with Rosatom for the nuclear power plant project were inked in December 2017, during meetings between Egypt’s President Abdul Fattah el-Sisi and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Cairo.
The plant is foreseen to take nine years to build and commission. Upon completion, it will have four VVER-1200 reactors, making Egypt the only country in the African region to have a Generation III+ reactor.
