President Adly Mansour announced on 7 November 2013 that Egypt was restarting its nuclear power program in El Dabaa; a deal was reached with the residents in which it was agreed that a residential area will also be built. The Egyptian minister of electricity, Ahmed Emam, has called the project "necessary" because of a small amount of renewable energy sources and not enough fuel. As of 2026, Egypt is actively constructing its first nuclear power plant at El Dabaa, consisting of four VVER-1200 reactors.
History The Egyptian nuclear power program was started in 1954 as the first research reactor ETRR-1 was acquired from the Soviet Union in 1958 and was opened by Gamal Abdel Nasser at Inchass, Nile Delta. The disposal of its spent fuel was controlled by the Soviets. In 1964, a 150 MWe nuclear power station was proposed, followed by a 600 MWe proposal in 1974. Also, the Nuclear Power Plants Authority (NPPA) was established in 1976, and in 1983 the El Dabaa site on the Mediterranean coast was selected. The nuclear program was then rejected just after Egypt's defeat by Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967 and the weakening of the Egyptian economy. In 1968 Egypt signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but postponed ratifying it citing evidence that Israel had undertaken a nuclear weapons program. Consequently, Egypt lost many of its nuclear experts and scientists who had to travel abroad to seek work opportunities. Some of them joined the Iraqi nuclear program and others emigrated to Canada. Egypt's nuclear plans were frozen after the Chernobyl accident. In 1992, Egypt acquired a 22MW multi-purpose research reactor ETRR-2 from Argentina. In 2006, Egypt announced it would revive its civilian nuclear power programme, and within 10 years build a 1,000 megawatt nuclear power station at El Dabaa. It was estimated to cost US$1.5bn, and it would be constructed with the participation of foreign investors. In March 2008, Egypt signed with Russia an agreement on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. As of 2012, after years of stop-start efforts, Egypt's nuclear energy ambitions were once again in flux. El Dabaa had been targeted by protesters who were claiming that their land was wrongly taken by the government to make way for the nuclear plant. As of 2012, as a result of those protests, the site was shut down. The Morsi government did not make any statements about its plans for the plant since construction was suspended. Egypt withdrew from talks regarding the implementation and effectiveness of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in Geneva on 29 April 2013, but remains a ratifier of the NPT. In November 2015, Egypt signed an intergovernmental agreement with Russia to build and operate the plant. In December 2016, Egypt signed the Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) contracts with Russian state nuclear company Rosatom for four VVER-1200 units, which became fully effective in December 2017. The agreement specifies that Russia will supply nuclear fuel throughout the lifecycle of the plant, arrange for personnel training, and assist in operation and maintenance for the first 10 years. Construction officially began on Unit 1 on 20 July 2022, followed by Unit 2 on 19 November 2022, Unit 3 on 3 May 2023, and Unit 4 on 23 January 2024. By late 2025, the project was progressing on schedule, marked by the installation of the reactor pressure vessel at Unit 1 in November 2025. Commercial operation of the first units is expected to begin around 2028, with all four units planned for completion by 2029–2030, eventually generating approximately 9% of the country's electricity. In May 2026, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi ratified legislative amendments to Law No. 7 of 2010 (Law No. 10 of 2026) to strengthen nuclear safety and regulatory oversight as the peaceful program continues to expand. In August 2022, state-run Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) signed a $2.2 billion deal with Russian state-run ASE (a subsidiary of Rosatom) to assist with construction and construct the turbine islands for the plant.
Undeclared nuclear activity In late 2004 and early 2005, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) started to investigate undisclosed experiments, which was published in open sources by former and current staff of the AEA, that indicated nuclear material, activities and facilities connected to uranium extraction, conversion, irradiation and reprocessing that unreported to the agency and a team of Agency inspectors visited the Nuclear Research Center in Inshas from 9 to 13 October 2004. On 14 February 2005, IAEA's Director General Mohamed ElBaradei circulated a report to the board of Governors finding "a number of failures by Egypt to report to the agency in accordance with its obligations." Egypt justified its reporting failures as the government and the IAEA had "differing interpretations" of Egypt's safeguards obligations and emphasizing that the country's "nuclear activities are strictly for peaceful purposes." Accordingly, Egypt had taken corrective actions and maintained full cooperation during the 2004/2005 investigation, which ended that the IAEA found no discrepancies between what have been declared during the investigation and IAEA's findings and no evidences of extraction of plutonium or enrichment of uranium and the investigation had been closed. In May 2009, according to a restricted IAEA report (IAEA's Safeguards Implementation Report (SIR) for 2008) obtained by Reuters, the U.N. nuclear watchdog was investigating the discovery of traces of highly enriched uranium (HEU) at a nuclear research facility. The detection was made by the environmental swipe samples taken in 2007 and 2008 at the Nuclear Research Center, which was tested positive for both low enriched uranium (LEU) and highly enriched uranium without confirming whether the (HEU) particles were weapon-grade material. Egypt accounted for the discovery of (HEU) material that it "could have been brought into the country through contaminated radioisotope transport containers," and the IAEA's inspectors had not verified the source of the particles, and there were no evidence that Egypt's explanation was not correct. Also, the report concludes that earlier issues of undeclared nuclear activities and material reported to the Board of Governors in February 2005, are no longer outstanding and all declared nuclear material remained in peaceful activities.
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