Egypt Announces Its Plan To Build 4 Nuclear Reactors.

[NNadir]

Many literate people know that the winner of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_ElBaradei">Mohammed Elbaradei, an Egyptian.

On the other hand, many illiterate people hate everything Elbaradei represents.

The nation that gave the world Elbaradei has announced its intention to build 4 nuclear reactors, the first to become operational in about 8 years.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/C-Egyptian_joint_venture_eyes_nuclear_contracts-1701114.html ">Egyptian joint venture eyes nuclear contracts

As the expected launch of a tender for the construction of Egypt's first nuclear power plant approaches, two of the country's largest contractors have announced a joint venture to bid on nuclear power projects in Egypt and the Middle East.

Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) said that its newly-created joint venture with Arab Contractors "aims to benefit from recently announced regional investment programs in the nuclear power sector."

The announcement of the joint venture came as Egypt's minister of electricity and energy, Hassan Younes, said that a tender for the construction of a nuclear power plant in Egypt is likely to be issued by the end of January.

Speaking at the fourth World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, UAE, Younes said that Egypt's energy industry is currently adopting a program for the establishment of four nuclear power reactors with a combined capacity of up to 4000 MWe. He noted that a nuclear law was passed in early 2010 and moves are currently under way to set up an independent nuclear safety agency.

The first proposed reactor is designed to produce 1000 MWe.

The entire State of California produced in 2009, http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/electricity_generation.html">846 MWh of Solar Electricity, constructed over more than 5 decades of hype, big talk, and little reality based action, subsidized massively by a government that cannot afford to build decent schools for California children.

This is the equivalent of 96 MWe power plant of any type operating at 100% of capacity utilization, although every last solar power plant in the State of California, as insignificant as they are, is backed up by dangerous natural gas.

There are no permanent repositories for dangerous natural gas waste.

Thus to exceed the output of all the solar facilities in California, the first Egyptian plant must merely operate at 96/1000 = 9.6% of capacity, something it is easy for a nuclear plant to do, since most nuclear plants around the world operate at better than 90% capacity utilization.

I wish Egypt well in constructing a nuclear infrastructure and hope that its native son, Mohammed Elbaradei, will lend his support, leadership and international prestige to the effort.