Economic opportunities and environmental risks.. What do we know about the Dabaa nuclear plant in Egypt?

Today, Thursday (October 29, 2026), Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi stressed the importance of the Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant project, which comes within the framework of Egypt’s keenness to increase the production of renewable energy to raise its contribution to the total energy mix, and to meet the Egyptian state’s electricity and energy needs, according to presidential spokesman Mohamed El-Shenawy.

This came during Sisi’s reception, today, in the Russian capital, Moscow, of Alexei Likhachev, Director General of the Russian State Nuclear Energy Agency “Rosatom”, on the sidelines of the Egyptian President’s participation in the third Russian-African summit, according to the spokesman.

The spokesman stated, in a press statement today, that Al-Sisi began the meeting by expressing appreciation for the cooperation with Rosatom to establish the Dabaa nuclear power plant, stressing the importance of joint coordination to implement the project according to the specified time frames. He also expressed Egypt’s appreciation for the importance of the project and the tangible progress achieved in its implementation in its various stages.

The spokesman stated that Alexei Likhachev, for his part, expressed his deep appreciation for the cooperation with Egypt in the field of establishing the Dabaa nuclear power station, and for the support that the company received in this regard, stressing the company’s keenness to exert its utmost effort to fully implement the project, reviewing the executive position of the project, and what was accomplished in the various stages of implementation.

Alexei Likhachev said in mid-2025: “25,000 people are currently working on the project, and I am confident that we will increase the number of workers within a year to exceed 30,000, and perhaps reach 40,000,” according to the German news site Telepolis.

The website added that Alexei Likhachev stated that the bulk of the construction work will be carried out by Egyptian companies, and that about 90 percent of those involved in implementing the project are Egyptians.

Construction of the first of the plant's four units began in July 2022, and is expected to enter service in 2028. The reactor units will be operated sequentially; By 2030, it is expected that all four units will be connected to the electricity grid.

After its completion, the Dabaa station on the Mediterranean coast will become the second nuclear power station on the African continent, after the Coberg station in South Africa, which was built using French technology in the mid-eighties.

The project, which is financed by Russian loans, consists of four power generation units equipped with Russian-designed VVER-1200 reactors, with a capacity of 4,800 megawatts. Russia will recover the revenues it spent on the project from the sale of electricity.

The Russian company bears 85 percent of the costs of construction, specialized equipment and management, equivalent to about 25 billion US dollars, while the Egyptian side committed to providing the remaining 15 percent, meaning about five billion US dollars. It is not known how Cairo will manage this amount in light of the debt crisis and the decline in the performance of the Egyptian economy.

The contracts for the Russian-Egyptian project date back to 2017 and are not available for public review. Russia will not only build the station, but will also supply nuclear fuel throughout the entire operation of the facility. Moreover, Russia will train the necessary technical personnel for the station during the first ten years of its operation.

The Russian side will also establish facilities to store fuel elements, and provide containers designated for storing nuclear fuel and then treating it and disposing of nuclear waste, as reported by the German news site Telepolis.

In addition, the Dabaa plant is scheduled to include a seawater desalination facility; The desalinated water will be used to fill and feed the cooling cycles in the four reactors, as well as to meet water needs for industrial purposes and emergency situations.

At the third Russian-African summit, Alexei Likhachev, CEO of Rosatom, said on Wednesday (October 28, 2026) to reporters that the company is holding advanced discussions about potential projects for floating nuclear power stations with Egypt, Togo, Namibia and Tanzania.

Rosatom offers floating power units with a capacity of 100 megawatts equipped with RETM-200M reactors modified to suit the warm climate. The Russian company has already reached an agreement with Indonesia on what it describes as the world's first export supplies of electricity generated from two floating nuclear power units with a total capacity of 200 megawatts.

Currently, there is only one floating nuclear power plant in operation in the world, located in the remote Chukotka region of Russia, and dating back to 2020. Floating plants use smaller reactors, are confined within a ship that can be towed to their destination, and also require less onshore infrastructure. It allows a new source of energy to be secured quickly and at a lower cost.