Russia to build nuclear fuel depot in Egypt

Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation (Rosatom) yesterday signed an agreement with the Egyptian government to build a storage depot for depleted nuclear fuel for Egypt’s first nuclear power plant (NPP) in Dabaa.

Rosatom’s Director of Public Policy on Radioactive Waste, Spent Nuclear Fuel and Nuclear Decommissioning, Oleg Kryukov, said: “At the request of the company’s Federal Centre for Nuclear and Radiation Safety, the fuel storage will be equipped with double transport-packing containers.”

Experts recently said that Rosatom must have dual-purpose containers for transportation and storage of the spent nuclear fuel of its overseas nuclear power plants’ construction projects. For Egypt, they have stressed, there is a need to build large warehouses for the storage of Egypt’s spent nuclear fuel, which will be reprocessed in Russia.

Read: Russia reveals draft agreement to use Egyptian air bases

On 19 November 2015, Egypt and Russia signed a deal to build and operate the first nuclear plant in Egypt’s west-northern coastal city of Dabaa.

The Dabaa nuclear plant was planned to consist of four reactors of 1,200 megawatts each. Under the agreement, Russia had provided Egypt with a $25 billion loan to finance the construction of the seven-year project, which will be paid off over 35 years.