The US company Bechtel Power has won a 10-year contract worth $180 million consult on and help design Egypt's first nuclear power station, state media said today.
A committee formed from different government bodies selected Bechtel from seven other corporations, Egypt's state news agency MENA quoted Minister of Energy and Electricity Hassan Younis as saying.
Younis said Bechtel would be charged with evaluating and selecting from different nuclear energy technologies on the international market, choosing sites for reactors and applying international safety standards.
Further consultations will be held with Bechtel before signing the consult and design contract, MENA said, with Bechtel also to prepare the way for a separate tender for the construction of the power station.
In October 2007, President Hosni Mubarak decided to relaunch Egypt's nuclear energy programme, which started with the Soviet Union in 1961 but was frozen following the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in the Ukraine.
Reports have said that the first reactor is expected to be built at Dabaa on the Mediterranean coast at a cost of $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion.
Egypt, which ratified the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1981, seeks a nuclear weapons-free Middle East and regularly criticises Israel for its undeclared nuclear arsenal.
However, Egypt has also said it will not sign a voluntary additional protocol to the NPT that would allow more intrusive inspections, saying it could make it too dependent on other countries for nuclear energy needs.
