Egypt and Russia’s Rosatom have held fresh talks on building an integrated seawater desalination facility at the El Dabaa nuclear power plant site, with officials signalling the project is moving toward finalising its technical and economic design.
Egypt’s Minister of Electricity and Renewable Energy, Mahmoud Esmat, met via video conference with Ksenia Sukhotina, General Director of Rosatom Smart Utilities, to review standards, regulations and technical requirements for the joint project, along with the next steps needed to lock in a technical and economic solution. The discussion also covered how to apply Rosatom’s desalination technology and expertise to the plant.
Turning desalination byproducts into a resource
Notably, the project’s stated ambition goes beyond producing fresh water. Officials say the plan aims to extract maximum economic and environmental value from the desalination system by studying and using the salts and minerals recovered from the process, potentially supporting related industries, subject to further feasibility work. Esmat has separately said the project should extend to technology transfer, local manufacturing and training Egyptian personnel across its various stages, alongside Rosatom’s commitment to develop local expertise.
Part of a much larger nuclear buildout
El Dabaa, on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast roughly 320 kilometres northwest of Cairo, is set to become Egypt’s first nuclear power plant and the first in Africa since South Africa’s Koeberg facility nearly 40 years ago. The Rosatom-led site will comprise four VVER-1200 reactors, with the first unit scheduled to connect to Egypt’s national grid in 2028 and the remaining three following by 2030.
Pairing desalination with nuclear generation is a long-standing ambition for Egypt, whose per-capita freshwater availability has fallen sharply over recent decades as its population has grown against a Nile water allocation fixed since 1959. Rosatom has previously indicated El Dabaa’s desalination capacity could scale to around 100,000 cubic metres per day, comparable to a facility under construction in Tunisia, by drawing on the reactors’ waste heat alongside dedicated desalination units, an approach that improves overall efficiency compared with running desalination purely on grid electricity.
The desalination talks follow broader discussions between Cairo and Moscow on expanding nuclear cooperation, including potential additional reactor units at El Dabaa, underscoring how central the Rosatom partnership has become to Egypt’s long-term energy and water security planning.
Sources: Utilities Middle East, Amwal Al Ghad