Russia building four reactors at Mediterranean site
The core catcher for Unit 4 at Egypt’s El Dabaa nuclear power station has been delivered and is expected to be installed by the end of the year, Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom said.
According to Rosatom, the core catcher left the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk in October with delivery carried out ahead of schedule due to early “construction readiness” at El Dabba-4.
The core catchers haven already been installed at the three other units under construction at El Dabaa, west of Cairo on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.
The core catcher – also known as a core melt localisation device or core trap – is designed to catch the molten core material, or corium, of a nuclear reactor in the event of a nuclear meltdown and to prevent it from escaping the containment.
The component is among the largest in a nuclear reactor system, weighing about 170 tonnes and with a height and diameter around six metres.
El Dabaa, Egypt’s first commercial nuclear power station, will have four Russia-supplied Generation III+ VVER-1200 pressurised water reactors, with the first unit expected to be online in 2026.
