Egypt -In Dabaa, the fight to halt nuclear power continues

“This is a technology that will make us even more dependent on private companies, said Greenpeace’s Egypt coordinator Ahmed el Droubi, adding that the need for foreign brainpower and materials is a threat to the country’s long-term “national security.”

“We’ll be importing a minimum of 80 percent of materials and knowledge, and relying on the countries we import from to deal with the uranium after,”

“Egypt has reached a preliminary agreement with a team from the International Monetary Fund for a $4.8 billion loan, a minister said on Tuesday.

“We have a preliminary agreement with the technical team of the IMF,” Planning and International Cooperation Ashraf al-Araby told a news conference with the head of the IMF delegation.”

Megan Detrie

Tue, 20/11/2012 – 12:16

Egypt Independant Press

Residents in Dabaa, the site of a proposed nuclear power plant, have said the government must reassess the feasibility of the project, during a conference with concerned activists last week.

“The conference was a chance for the residents to voice their concerns,” said Baher Shawky of the Habitat International Coalition, who attended the conference.

“The people of Dabaa have been living on this land for four centuries, their livelihood is dependent on it and they possess a unique relationship with it. No one has been told why this land would be ideal for a nuclear power plant.”

The small town on the country’s North Coast, just miles from Marsa Matrouh, is the location of a proposed nuclear plant. The planned site is likely to extend 55 square kilometers. Protesters have been demanding the plant be relocated because they have lost land to the project.

The Ministry of Electricity has yet to accede to residents’ demands. Nuclear energy has long been in the works for Egypt, and the government has pushed to develop it as a source of electricity since 1981. But it wasn’t until the International Atomic Energy Agency signed off on the project site in 2010 that the dream of nuclear power gained traction.

The government has said it plans to construct four nuclear power reactors by 2025, with the first of them to be put into operation in 2019.

But activists have voiced concerns over the impact nuclear power will have on the country’s energy sovereignty. Egypt will have to import the uranium needed to make the reactor work, as well as rely on foreign companies for the construction of the plant.

“This is a technology that will make us even more dependent on private companies, said Greenpeace’s Egypt coordinator Ahmed el Droubi, adding that the need for foreign brainpower and materials is a threat to the country’s long-term “national security.”

“We’ll be importing a minimum of 80 percent of materials and knowledge, and relying on the countries we import from to deal with the uranium after,” he said.

Since last August, thousands of residents protested the site, saying the people who had lived there were ousted from their property against their will.

The land confiscated was used by residents for agriculture, grazing, fishing and fowl hunting. Homes and trees have also been torn down to make way for the bulking nuclear structure.

“We are demanding that a team of government sponsored experts come to analyze the land and the feasibility of the project. The residents will alsocontinue to protest, especially after announcements by the government that they will give ownership to Sinai Bedouin of the land they live on,” said Shawky. Bedouins living around Marsa Matrouh should be offered the same land rights as Sinai Bedouins, he added.

The demand comes in the wake of a new government initiative to settle the Sinai’s Bedouin population into formal landholding arrangements. Last month, Hesham Qandil, the prime minister, announced that people in Sinai will be allowed to purchase the land where they reside.

Also, Bedouins in Sinai will be given priority to purchase newly reclaimed agriculture land near the Salam Canal, which the government hopes to sell to Sinai residents and the country’s youth.

Egypt has a history of ignoring resident concerns over mega-projects. After protests last November in the port city of Damietta, activists were able to permanently shut down a fertilizer factory they claimed polluted local fish stocks and agriculture.

Experts say residents were not consulted about the construction of the factory, which sits only a couple hundred meters away from a middle class neighborhood and school.

Built in 2008 by the state-owned Misr Oil Processing Company (MOPCO) and Agrium, a Canadian fertilizer company, the factory was the site of mass demonstration in 2008, and again last year, after expansion plans were announced. The protests was a forerunner for the kinds of civil resistance witnessed during last year’s uprising, as well as in sit-ins since, according to Sharif El Musa, an assistant professor of environmental political science at the American University in Cairo.

“There were lessons to be learned from the peaceful and creative way they demonstrated in 2008,” said Musa last year. Now, residents of Dabaa are asking to be similarly heard by the current government.

http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/dabaa-fight-halt-nuclear-power-continues

Egyptians fight back against nuclear power plans

By JOANNA PARASZCZUK

07/17/2012 02:42

As environmentalist campaigns intensify against El-Dabaa plant, Egypt’s nuclear energy ambitions remain uncertain.

Egyptian environmental and human rights activists launched a grassroots protest campaign this week against plans to construct a large-scale nuclear power plant on the country’s northwestern coast.

In 1981, then-president Hosni Mubarak issued a decree to build the 55 sq.km. plant in the town of El-Dabaa in Egypt’s Matrouh governorate, as part of a push to develop the country’s civilian nuclear program.

However, in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, plans for the reactor were put on ice.

Now, after years of thwarted efforts, Egypt’s nuclear energy ambitions still remain uncertain.

Though the Egyptian Electricity Ministry and the Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority insist they will go ahead with the project, El-Dabaa residents and activists complain that the state has illegally confiscated land and destroyed homes in the town to pave the way for the power plant.

Construction of the plant was scheduled to start in January, but was delayed following violent protests by local residents who said they had been evicted from their land.

Meanwhile, international concerns about Egypt’s lax nuclear security were also raised in January, after the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed reports that low-level radioactive material had been stolen from a laboratory at El-Dabaa.

The El-Dabaa nuclear plans faced another hurdle this week, when in a united effort to combat the scheme, opponents of the power plant launched a large-scale campaign at Cairo’s Journalists Syndicate on Sunday.

Present were three human rights groups: the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the Egyptian Center for Civic and Legislative Reform and Habitat International Coalition-Housing and Land Rights Network, as well as El-Dabaa Mayor Mehanna Abdel Hamid and residents of the town.

Abdel Hamid called on President Mohamed Mursi to “remove the injustice” of the power plant from El-Dabaa.

The mayor said that in order to build the power plant, the government had demolished 350 homes and confiscated olive, fig and wheat fields there.

“The El-Dabaa nuclear project is dangerous,” he added, saying that local people were frightened about radiation from the plant.

Abdel Hamid called on Mursi to implement the project in another location, such as the Red Sea area.

The activists also presented a report on the plant, which they said was compiled by their own fact-finding committee. The three human rights groups accused the Mubarak administration of failing to disclose the details of the project, including its costs.

Ahmed Mansour, who led the fact-finding mission, accused the Egyptian press of ignoring the plight of El-Dabaa residents while lauding Egypt’s nuclear ambitions, the Al- Masry Al-Youm daily reported.

The activists have also taken their campaign online, promoting it via a Facebook page. They say the protests will continue in the upcoming months.

Supporters of the peaceful nuclear program have also established a Facebook campaign. Echoing generations of Egyptian leaders, the campaign calls modern nuclear technology a source of national pride that will “place Egypt in the ranks of developed nations.”

Former president Gamal Abdel Nasser established the Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority in 1955. Nasser initially pushed for the country to develop its civilian nuclear capabilities, but in the 1960s threatened to develop a military nuclear program – motivated both by intelligence that Israel was developing nuclear weapons and his own ideologies that Egypt should lead the Arab world.

Egypt discarded those plans after Israel defeated it in the 1967 Six Day War. In 1968 Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, signed the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty, enabling the country to pursue civilian nuclear energy.

Egypt currently has two nuclear research reactors.

The first, a Van de Graaf type 2 megawatt reactor, is located at Inshas research facility, 60 km. from Cairo. It was built andinstalled in 1959 by the USSR, three years after Egypt signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with the Soviets.

An Argentinean company, INVAP, installed the second reactor, a 22 megawatt ETTR-2 pool type, light water reactor, in 1997. According to INVAP, the reactor is designed for neutron physics, materials science, nuclear fuel and boron neutron capture therapy, and allows Egypt to supply domestic medical isotopes.

According to a recent report by Washington-based nonprofitthe Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, development of civilian nuclear energy is important to Egypt, since the country’s existing power plants are unable to supply enough electricity.

In 2011, Dr. Abd El Hamid Abbas El Desoky Ibrahim, head of development at Egypt’s Nuclear Power Plants Authority, said the growing demand for energy in Egypt meant the country needed to “be more concerned” with nuclear energy.
Speaking at an IAEA conference on energy and nuclear power in Africa, Ibrahim said this included updating the El- Dabaa plant.

http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=277734

Egypt reaches preliminary deal for $4.8 billion IMF loan

CAIRO | Tue Nov 20, 2012 6:51am EST

(Reuters) – Egypt has reached a preliminary agreement with a team from the International Monetary Fund for a $4.8 billion loan, a minister said on Tuesday.

“We have a preliminary agreement with the technical team of the IMF,” Planning and International Cooperation Ashraf al-Araby told a news conference with the head of the IMF delegation.

The minister added that the preliminary agreement would go to the IMF board to be finalized in December. An IMF official said the loan would be disbursed over 22 months.

(Writing by Edmund Blair; editing by Patrick Graham)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/20/us-egypt-imf-idUSBRE8AJ0LK20121120

November 20, 2012 - Posted by arclight2011 | Uncategorized

No comments yet.

nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope