The Politics of Egypt's Nuclear Energy Program

Abstract

Egypt is the third largest population after Nigeria and Ethiopia as well as the third-highest gross national income (GNI) in Africa (USEIA, 2015). For a longer period of time, Israel has argued that Iran's nuclear program would cause a regional nuclear race in Middle East and African continent. Indeed, several countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have announced their intentions to build nuclear power plants. More precisely, in Middle East the first Arab nuclear power plant will be built by United Arab Emirates (UAE) which is scheduled to be fully operational in 2020, Saudi Arabia's nuclear plan consisting sixteen nuclear reactors is scheduled to be fully operational by the end of 2023 as well as Jordan's nuclear power plant  which is planned to be operational by 2023, too(Shay, 2016).  In North Africa, the most ambitious program is the Egypt's nuclear power plan. In November 2015, in Cairo, Egypt's Minister of energy Mohamed Shaker signed an intergovernmental agreement with Russian state-owned nuclear corporation ROSATOM to build a nuclear power plant equipped with four 1200 MWe units in El-Dabaa(WNN, 2015). To date, few studies have been made to examine the energy security of Egypt, where mostly are focusing on short term. Thus, the main objectives of this research are examining the impact of nuclear energy over Egypt's economic growth as well as examining the geo-strategic implications in MENA region. This paper argues that, from one side the nuclear energy enhances the economic growth and energy security of Egypt, whereas on the other side shifts the balance of powers in MENA region which could trigger another armed conflict in that region. Also, nuclear energy is pushing the need for higher regional cooperation among African countries in assessing regional capacities in building efficient electricity infrastructure.