Core catcher delivered for El Dabaa's fourth unit

The core catcher for unit 4 at Egypt's El Dabaa nuclear power plant is expected to be installed by the end of the year. It means all four units will have passed that landmark within little more than a year.

The 6.1-metre diameter core catcher (also known as a melt trap) is a key bit of safety equipment for the VVER-1200 reactor - it is a container in the form of a cone made of thermally resistant steel which in the unlikely event of an emergency will securely hold the melt of the core and not allow radioactive substances to leave the containment of the reactor.

Manufacturing of the core catcher took about 14 months, after which it set sail from the Russian port of Novorossiysk on 28 October and was delivered on 4 November (see picture above). Egypt's Nuclear Power Plants Authority (NPPA) said that installation by Atomstroyexport, part of Rosatom, would begin on 19 November, the ninth anniversary of the signing of the Egypt-Russia intergovernmental agreement on cooperation on building and operating the plant.

The core catcher for unit 4 had been scheduled for installation in 2025, but the project is currently running ahead of schedule. NPPA called it "another major milestone" for the country's first nuclear power plant project.

Alexey Kononenko, director of the El Dabaa NPP construction project, said that the core catchers for the first two units were installed in 2023 and the aim is to have installed the two for units 3 and 4 in 2024. He added: "We are successfully working on the simultaneous construction of all four power units of the first Egyptian NPP, using advanced technologies and modern engineering solutions ... we have moved from individual unique projects to an industrial flow method of construction."

The El Dabaa nuclear power plant project - about 320 kilometres north-west of Cairo - is based on contracts that entered into force on 11 December 2017. The plant will comprise four VVER-1200 units, like those already in operation at the Leningrad and Novovoronezh nuclear power plants in Russia, and the Ostrovets plant in Belarus.

The contracts stipulate that Rosatom will not only build the plant, but will also supply Russian nuclear fuel for its entire life cycle. They will also assist Egyptian partners in training personnel and plant maintenance for the first 10 years of its operation. Rosatom is also contracted to build a special storage facility and supply containers for storing used nuclear fuel.