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Cairo-based Arab Contractors Company has won a $418m marine works contract from Atomstroyexport (ASE), a subsidiary of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation (Rosatom), the main contractor for Egypt's first nuclear power plant project in El-Dabaa.

The contract scope includes the construction of two breakwaters with a total length of 3 kilometres and a sedimentation basin with an area of 1 million square metres, in addition to marine life protection facilities.

Arab Contractors said the most prominent component of the project is "a giant breakwater" with a length of 1,650 metres, a height of approximately 10.2 metres, and a depth of about 21 metres.

The project is the "largest breakwater of its kind in the region, to provide comprehensive protection for the nuclear facility".

The project will require about 600,000 cubic metres of concrete, 2.5 million cubic metres of rocks, and 950 tonnes of reinforced steel. Arab Contractors is also expected to dredge an equivalent of 2.55 million cubic metres as part of the project.

According to Arab Contractors, the project will require the installation of about 15,000 linear metres of pipes with a diameter of 1 metre under the sea.

The El-Dabaa nuclear power plant will have four units, each capable of generating 1,200MW of electricity. The plant’s first reactor is scheduled to be operational in 2026.

In January this year, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and Russian President Vladimir Putin inaugurated the construction of the fourth unit of the El-Dabaa nuclear power plant.

Egypt and Russia signed the initial inter-governmental agreement for the North African state’s first nuclear facility in November 2015.

Rosatom announced in June 2022 that it had started producing electrical components in Saint Petersburg for a reactor vessel for the plant.