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The Egyptian Electricity Ministry announced that four companies are currently competing over the Dabaa nuclear power project that is expected to be in operation by 2027, to produce 8,000 megawatts of electricity, the financial newspaper Al-Alam Al-Youm reported.
The companies’ origins are from China, Russia, Korea and France. They will offer financial and technical assistance to the project in the form of soft loans and safety-related studies, Al-Alam Al-Youm quoted an official source as saying.
The first unit of the project will operate by 2022.
The Egyptian government is racing against time to use nuclear energy for the generation of electricity. The country considered it a national priority that would satisfy Egypt’s developmental needs during the coming decades in light of the energy crisis that has plagued the country.
According to Electricity and Renewable Energy Minister Mohamad Shaker, this crisis is due to the lack of fuel needed to generate electricity and the inefficiency of existing power plants.
He contained, "these generate only 30,000 megawatts, which is not enough to satisfy the needs of Egypt, where the amount of electricity consumed per capita is 30 percent lower than the world average."