en.Wedoany.com Reported - The reactor pressure vessel for Unit 2 of Egypt's El Dabaa nuclear power plant has been installed in place, just seven months after the same operation was completed for Unit 1. Alexey Likhachev, President of Rosatom, stated that this progress reflects the accelerated pace of the project.
The Egyptian government announced the news on its official Facebook account. Likhachev noted that the next phase of work will involve welding of the reactor's main cooling system pipelines.
Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and Rafael Mariano Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), jointly attended the installation ceremony.
Weighing approximately 330 tons, the reactor pressure vessel is about 13 meters long and 4.5 meters in diameter. Its initial design service life is 60 years, extendable to 80 years. The equipment arrived at El Dabaa from Volgodonsk, Russia, in May, as part of what Rosatom describes as "the largest ever shipment to a single nuclear power plant." This cylindrical steel pressure vessel, which houses the reactor core, ensures leak-tightness and withstands high pressure and temperature, thereby guaranteeing the safety and reliability of the unit.
El Dabaa will become Egypt's first nuclear power plant and the first to be constructed on the African continent since the Koeberg nuclear power plant in South Africa was built nearly 40 years ago. Led by Rosatom, the project is located approximately 320 kilometers northwest of Cairo and will feature four VVER-1200 (V-1200 pressurized water reactor) units, the same model as those already in operation at Russia's Leningrad and Novovoronezh nuclear power plants, as well as Belarus's Ostrovets nuclear power plant.
Under a contract signed in 2017, Rosatom is not only responsible for constructing the plant but will also supply Russian nuclear fuel throughout its entire lifecycle, including building a storage facility and providing containers for spent fuel storage. Additionally, during the first 10 years of plant operation, Rosatom will assist Egyptian partners in personnel training and plant maintenance. Rosatom stated that its goal is to achieve a future service life of 100 years for the nuclear power plant.
The four units are being built in a nearly synchronized construction model, with the first concrete pour for Unit 1 in July 2022, followed sequentially by the other units, and the first concrete pour for Unit 4 in January 2024. The Egyptian government aims for nuclear power to account for 9% of electricity generation by 2030, with the commercial operation of the first two units directly replacing oil and natural gas, thereby helping to achieve this target.
