CAIRO: The US company Bechtel Power has won a 10-year contract worth LE 1 billion ($180 million) to consult on and help design Egypt’s first nuclear power station, state media said on Monday.
A committee formed from different government bodies selected Bechtel from seven other corporations, Egypt’s state news agency MENA quoted Minister of Energy and Electricity Hassan Younis as saying.
Younis said Bechtel would be charged with evaluating and selecting from different nuclear energy technologies on the international market, choosing sites for reactors and applying international safety standards.
Further consultations will be held with Bechtel before signing the consult and design contract, MENA said, with Bechtel also to prepare the way for a separate tender for the construction of the power station.
In October 2007, President Hosni Mubarak decided to relaunch Egypt’s nuclear energy program, which started with the Soviet Union in 1961 but was frozen following the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in the Ukraine.
Reports have said that the first reactor is expected to be built at Dabaa on the Mediterranean coast at a cost of $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion.
Egypt, which ratified the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1981, seeks a nuclear weapons-free Middle East and regularly criticizes Israel for its undeclared nuclear arsenal.
However, Egypt has also said it will not sign a voluntary additional protocol to the NPT that would allow more intrusive inspections, saying it could make it too dependent on other countries for nuclear energy needs.
In March, Mubarak and Russia s President Vladimir Putin oversaw the signing of a deal that enabled Moscow to bid for the power station s construction.
While on the face of it the deal simply allowed Russia to bid for that contract, Mubarak s declaration that it followed difficult negotiations suggested substantial details were kept quiet.
Egypt has also received offers of nuclear technological help from France and China. Arab nations are increasingly turning to nuclear power, which Mubarak has described as an Arab right.
Six Gulf nations, including Saudi Arabia, as well as Yemen, Jordan, Libya, Algeria and Morocco have said they would like to have civilian nuclear programs.
As yet, no Arab nation figures on the International Atomic Energy Agency s list of 31 countries with nuclear power plants.
Arab nations cite their need for energy security in the face of ever-expanding domestic energy demands, even countries with vast oil and gas reserves. -AFP
