Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (Enec) has completed loading fuel into unit 1 of the Barakah nuclear energy plant in Al-Dhafra.

Mohamed al-Hammadi, Enec CEO, confirmed this on 6 May during a virtual fireside chat with Frederick Kempe, president and CEO of the Atlantic Council Global Energy Centre.

“Following receipt of the operating licence from the Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation (FANR) and having completed the loading of fuel assemblies into unit 1’s reactor, we are in the advanced stages of starting up unit 1,” Al-Hammadi said.

The executive noted that the Covid-19 pandemic has not derailed Enec’s plans. “We have 700 employees working on the project to meet the timeline," said Al-Hammadi. "Testing is also continuing at units 2, 3 and 4, following the completion of all major construction work."

MEED reported that unit 1 of the Barakah plant is expected to begin operations between late 2020 and early 2021.

In February, FANR issued the operating licence for the first unit of the Barakah nuclear plant to the Nawah Energy Company (Nawah), the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation’s (Enec) subsidiary responsible for operation of the nuclear power plant.

The operating licence has a duration of 60 years.

Enec and Nawah submitted the 14,000-page operating licence application to FANR in 2015.

Following the issuance of the operating licence for unit 1, Nawah will undertake a period of commissioning

The regulator is understood to have conducted more than 185 inspections and requested approximately 2,000 additional pieces of information on various matters related to reactor design, safety and other issues to ensure the Barakah nuclear energy plant’s complete compliance with all regulatory requirements.

The UAE is building four units at the Barakah nuclear power plant. In February, Enec said the project’s overall construction completion rate was more than 93 per cent.

At the time, the completion rates for each of the four units were:

• Unit 1: completed
• Unit 2: 95 per cent
• Unit 3: 92 per cent
• Unit 4: 83 per cent

Project background

Last year, South Korea’s Doosan Heavy Industries signed a maintenance services agreement with the UAE’s Nawah Energy Company for the Barakah nuclear project.

Under the agreement, Doosan will provide a range of maintenance services and manpower to support routine and outage maintenance activities for the four 1,400MW reactor units.

Nawah Energy was created by a joint venture of Enec and Korea Electric Power Corporation, which is developing the GCC’s first nuclear power plant.

Operation of the first 1.4GW reactor at the $24.4bn Barakah nuclear power plant was originally scheduled for 2017.

The Barakah nuclear plant will have a total generation capacity of 5.6GW when fully commissioned. Construction on the first reactor began in 2012.