El Dabaa ( ar, الضبعة ) is a

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

in the

Matrouh Governorate Matrouh Governorate ( ar, محافظة مطروح ) is one of the governorates of Egypt. Located in the north-western part of the country, it borders Libya. Its capital is Mersa Matruh. Municipal divisions The governorate is divided into munic ...

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

. It lies from

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...

on the

north coast North Coast or Northcoast may refer to : Antigua and Barbuda * Major Division of North Coast, a census division in Saint John Parish Australia *New South Wales North Coast, a region Canada *The British Columbia Coast, primarily the communiti ...

and is served by the

El Alamain International Airport El Alamein International Airport (Arabic: ''Maṭār El ʿAlamein El Dawli'') is an international airport located in El Dabaa, Matrouh Governorate, Egypt. The airport is located at the Northern coast, west of Alexandria. Operations Overvie ...

. It is famous for the Russian technology

nuclear power plant A nuclear power plant (NPP) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a electric generator, generato ...

being constructed to the north east of the city boundaries. As of 2017, El Dabaa had an estimated population of 49,805. In 2012, a story published in the news section of

Nature Journal ''Nature'' is a British weekly scientific journal founded and based in London, England. As a multidisciplinary publication, ''Nature'' features peer-reviewed research from a variety of academic disciplines, mainly in science and technology. It ...

website, stated that:"''... adioactive/nowiki> material was taken from a laboratory at the El Dabaa nuclear power plant on the country’s Mediterranean coast.''" But as of 2020, the El Dabaa nuclear power plant was only bare land. As of 2017, only the first stage of preliminary engineering survey was conducted and the hydrographic and hydrological survey work was carried on. The construction on the plant was expected to start in 2020, but at the beginning of 2021 it was still in the waiting. El Dabaa has been targeted by protesters who are claiming that their land was wrongly taken by the government to make way for the nuclear plant. As of 2012, and as a result of those protests, the proposed construction site was shut down. The protests that targeted El Dabaa was ended by the court announcing that they had the right to the land.

El Dabaa Nuclear Project

The residents of El Dabaa decided to give up the land. The Armed Forces thanked the residents of El-Dabaa for their contributions in handing over the land allocated for the establishment of nuclear power plant. In a statement released on 30 September 2013, Egyptian Army spokesman Ahmed Mohammed Ali said that the Army is committed to taking the necessary procedures to compensate those affected from the project. On 7 November 2013 President

Adly Mansour Adly Mahmoud Mansour ( ar, عدلى محمود منصور ; born 23 December 1945) is an Egyptian judge and politician who served as the president (or chief justice) of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt. He also served as interim ...

announced that the nuclear power program will be restarted. On 14 November 2013, a spokesman for the electricity ministry named Aktham Abouelela stated that the tender to build the reactor will begin in January 2014, though it has been delayed until the end of 2014. The target year for operation is 2019; the plant would be used for 60 years. The plant would function as a

light water reactor The light-water reactor (LWR) is a type of thermal-neutron reactor that uses normal water, as opposed to heavy water, as both its coolant and neutron moderator; furthermore a solid form of fissile elements is used as fuel. Thermal-neutron reacto ...

and would have a capacity of 950 to 1,650

megawatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units, International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), ...

s. In November 2015 and March 2017 Egypt signed preliminary agreements with Russian nuclear company

Rosatom Rosatom, ( rus, Росатом, p=rɐsˈatəm}) also known as Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation, the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom or Rosatom State Corporation, is a Russian state corporation headquartered in Moscow that speciali ...

for a first

VVER-1200 The water-water energetic reactor (WWER), or VVER (from russian: водо-водяной энергетический реактор; transliterates as ; ''water-water power reactor'') is a series of pressurized water reactor designs originally de ...

unit to start in 2024. In November 2017 preliminary contracts for the construction of four VVER-1200 units were signed in the presence of Egyptian President

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi; (born 19 November 1954) is an Egyptian politician and retired military officer who has served as the sixth and current president of Egypt since 2014. Before retiring as a general in the Egyptian mil ...

and Russian President

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...

Climate

Köppen-Geiger climate classification system classifies its climate as

hot desert A desert is a barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About one ...

(BWh), but it is highly moderated by its proximity to the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the ea ...

along the

northern coast of Egypt The Northern Coast of Egypt ( ar, الساحل الشمالي, "'", North Coast, commonly shortened to "'", "The Coast" or "The Egyptian Coast") extends for about along the Mediterranean Sea, it covers entirely the northern territory of Egypt. ...

References

Populated places in Matrouh Governorate {{Coord missing, Egypt