REGIONAL SITING OF EL DABAA NUCLEAR POWER PLANT EGYPTIAN NATIONAL PROJECT

The area is located on the Northern Western Desert of Egypt from latitudes 30°N to 32°N and from
longitudes 27°E to 30°E. The area includes Ras El Dabaa location, the first candidate site to receive the
national project in the nuclear power plant, where it is directly located on the Mediterranean Sea shore.
In seeking a site for a Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) a utility must balance the engineering and economic
factors with the special requirement to minimize the radiological risk.
This work will provide some insights into the issues involved in siting a nuclear power plant, from the
perspective of both the utility and regulator. Among these we will present the general factors associated
with the siting of large electrical generating plants; the special factors associated with selection and approval
of El Dabaa site for nuclear power plant through studying its geology, fracture lineaments and topography
at regional scale (1:500,000).
Results of this integrated study show that Ras El Dabaa location satisfies the safety standards of the
IAEA 2002, 2003 and 2012 as well as the NRC 2006 and 2014, where it exhibits low topography, very low
seismic activity, and low radioactivity while surface fracture lineaments density and trend analyses indicate
a NE-SW predominant fracture trend with densities within the safe levels. These factors support and
facilitate the security plans, emergency measures and evacuation plans if needed, while the direct location
on the Mediterranean guarantees the continuous, easy and sufficient supply of water. Thus, Ras El Dabaa
area could be considered to be the first candidate site to receive the nuclear power plant national project of
Egypt.