Dr. Mohamed Shaker, minister of electricity and renewable energy, emphasized that there is no delay in signing the contracts of the nuclear project, but the contracts are complex: “we should discuss and review each and every clause of the four contracts carefully in the interest of Egypt. Then finally determining the date of signature by the Presidency”.
The minister of electricity said, in an interview with “Sada Al Balad,” we asked for the assistance of an international consultancy agencies specialized in the conclusion of nuclear contracts to sign contracts with the Russian side”.
He denied unequivocally the rumors about unfair conditions against the Egyptian side, especially regarding to the value of the loan. He pointed out: “Egypt has the nuclear plants with the lowest cost in the world moreover, we did not limit ourselves to the advanced third generation reactors, but we demanded some additional properties”. So, the total estimated at 29 billion US$, the Russian side will provide 25 billion $, and the Egyptian side will afford about 4 billion $.
About the spent nuclear fuel, he indicated that there would not be spent nuclear fuel before 20 years starting from the establishment of the reactor, and the global expertise in waste management has been fully proven either in the recycling or the repository. Egypt has access to the global expertise and there is no need to worry about transfer of know-how.
He said that the land of Al Dabaa has the capacity for 8 nuclear plants in 8 phases, the first phase is to establish a plant with 4 nuclear reactors to generate electricity with a capacity of 1200 megawatts with a total capacity of 4800 megawatts.