ON THE EVE of the governing National Democratic Party’s annual fall convention, everyone from drones in the rank and file to the media’s talking heads and the party’s arch-enemies expected the agenda to focus squarely on controversial constitutional amendments the party had pledged to introduce in the People’s Assembly when MPs return from summer recess this month.

Instead, the party dropped a bombshell of a different sort as Assistant Secretary-General and policy guru Gamal Mubarak announced Egypt was resurrecting its long-dormant nuclear energy program in a bid to start producing more — and cheaper — electricity for the starving national grid.

The move, Mubarak contended in an interview aired on state-owned television last month, would introduce some much-needed diversity into Egypt’s pool of energy sources. The party’s chief policy architect says diversification would satisfy the rising demand for electricity and help extend the life of the nation’s supply of exhaustible sources of fuel including oil, natural gas and coal.

Responding to critics’ claims that the announcement was nothing but a propaganda tool for the party, Mubarak maintained that the idea was not born during the days immediately before the conference.

“We have been talking in one of the party’s committees about energy for the last two years,” Mubarak said, “but the issue was discussed in more precise details last month because the coming wave of investments will demand more energy. Moreover, turmoil in the global energy market has established new ground rules.”

Mubarak also made clear last month that Egypt has no intention of breathing new life into its nuclear weapons program, saying the party was interested in promoting only the civil use of nuclear technology.

Associated Press Gamal Mubarak makes the announcement.

Mohamed Abd-Elsalam, an expert on nuclear arms at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, is adamant that the resurrection of the nuclear power program has nothing to do with an ambitions Mubarak may have to succeed his father as president of the republic.

“[Nuclear] energy programs in Egypt have a long history — and are very complex — and there was strong enthusiasm about those programs. That makes it very difficult to simply politicize the matter or associate it with an NDP conference or talks on ‘hereditary succession’,” says Abd-Elsalam, who is also a member of a subcommittee of the NDP Policies’ Secretariat.

While few criticized the move last month, one of the father’s of Egypt’s nuclear power program was clearly shocked by the announcement.

“This was a surprise to us, because it was [long-]forbidden to talk about nuclear reactors,” says Mohamed E. Abdel Aziz, a former chairman of the Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority. “Whenever I spoke to the minister of electricity [about it], he would say, ‘Do not talk about it Dr. Abdel Aziz, do not cause us trouble, we are not going to build nuclear reactors’.”

Nuclear buildup

Egypt launched its first nuclear program in the early 1950s when President Gamal Abdel-Nasser created a research establishment to study the peaceful uses of atomic energy. The program received assistance from the world’s two superpowers and set in motion the Inshas Nuclear Research Center. The United States contributed with the installation of a radioisotope laboratory in the late 1950s, while the former Soviet Union provided Egypt with a research reactor in 1961.

Amid mounting concerns that Israel was developing nuclear weapons in the early 1960s, Egypt threatened to start weaponization. Nasser explored the option of purchasing nuclear arms from both the USSR and China, but edged away after the 1967 war, opting instead to sign on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the hope that Israel might be convinced to follow suit.

Israel never did — and remains to this day the only country in the region with nuclear weapons.

Talk of the peaceful use of nuclear energy resurfaced again in the 1970s after a visit by US President Richard Nixon. According to Abdel Aziz, Nixon promised at the time to provide Egypt with a 600 megawatt reactor to produce electricity and desalinate sea water. However, he made the offer contingent upon Egypt’s acceptance that all its nuclear sites would be subject to inspection, says Abdel Aziz, adding that Nixon made the same offer to Israel at that time.

“Shrewd Sadat asked whether Israel accepted this condition. Nixon told him no; ultimately, Sadat said that Egypt would not accept it either. That’s how the project failed,” recounts Abdel Aziz.

Egypt ratified the NPT in 1981 and committed to a peaceful nuclear program to generate electricity.

“Ultimately, it was decided to build eight nuclear reactors between the 1980s and 2000, and we made deals with some countries. Very important and costly site location studies were done, and Al-Dabaa was chosen as the most suitable site in 1986,” Abdel Aziz recalls.

That same year, a Soviet nuclear reactor at Chernobyl melted down. Domestic fears of a similar disaster at an Egyptian facility saw the state mothball the nuclear project. Those fears may not have entirely subsided: The primary source of objections last month to restarting the program came from media pundit who wondered whether Egyptian engineers believed deeply enough in safety standards to be trusted with a reactor.

“[Today,] I have two feelings: I am happy on one hand and sad on the other that we lost 20 years. When the state has the will and wants to do something, it can do it. We started our nuclear program at the same time as India,” he says, pointing out that India today has 10 reactors on stream and four under construction — in addition to a stockpile of some 60 nuclear warheads.

Abd-Elsalam says there’s no backing down now, not even in the face of concerns over how the international community might view the venture.

“All the statements show that this time, the decision is final,” Abd-Elsalam says. “Even the general atmosphere shows it. You have the Supreme Energy Council convening for the first time in 18 years just [a few] days after the announcement. Every day, you read a piece of news on the issue in the press, and discussions are everywhere.”

At press time, the Supreme Council of Energy was expected to convene again after the Eid holidays for further discussions of the issue.

Building-up energy

“This is our last chance to have a nuclear program because all the opportunities are there. We have an oil problem, there is rising public concern over the energy issue, and there’s the Iranian issue. In the meantime, the Americans are willing to help,” says Abd-Elsalam.

To reduce the budget deficit, the government has sharply cut its fuel subsidy budget this past summer by raising prices of both diesel and 90-octane gasoline at the pumps by as much as 25%. Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif expects the move to save LE 3 billion a year. Subsidies of for petroleum products have risen from LE 1.2 billion in fiscal year 1998-99 to almost LE 42 billion in 2005-06.

According to an NDP policy paper entitled “The Future of Energy and the Rights of the Coming Generations” drafted by Mubarak’s Policies Secretariat, 38.1 percent of Egypt’s conventional fuel produced in 2004-05 was used to produce electricity. The vast majority of that comes from the combustion of natural gas: 59.2 percent of the total production of natural gas is used to produce electricity.

In the meantime, the party expects that reserves of the natural gas could be exhausted in 34 years’ time; oil reserves are expected to be depleted in 15 years.

The 34-year figure could yet be stretched if Egypt makes new discoveries, but mining for new gas deposits has been slowed by a global shortage of gas rigs. Although Egypt is now the eighth-largest producer of petroleum in the world — thanks largely natural gas — the lion’s share of deposits has been spoken for under long-term export contracts.

In the meantime, the production of electricity is increasing. Official figures show production rose from 78.3 million megawatts per hour in 2000-01 to 101.3 million megawatts per hour in 2004-05. Consumption topped 85.8 million megawatts per hour in 2004-05, up 32.8 percent from 64.6 megawatts per hour in 2000-01.

Minister of Electricity and Energy Hassan Younes has announced that the nuclear project will start off with one or two 1000 megawatt reactors. Speaking to Al-Ahram daily on October 9, Younes added that there is no limit to the number of reactors he might authorize. Power from the program, he added, could be used in irrigation programs by desalinating water from the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

Younes says he expects the first reactor to come online in eight to 10 years.

Joining the race

Besides the need to balance the supply-and-demand equation, Abd-Elsalam believes there is another regional reason for the decision to revive the program: Iran. The fact that Iran is moving forward with its nuclear program, he suggests, has recently prompted many Arab countries to enter the field.

He singles out Yemen and a number of Gulf countries that have recently announced plans to develop civil nuclear programs. “In an atmosphere where the civil use of nuclear energy is proliferating, it was impossible for Egypt to stay silent, especially that it was the first country in the region to develop a nuclear program,” Abd-Elsalam says.

On her tour of the Middle East last month, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed American support for Egypt’s plan to use nuclear energy peacefully.

“We are supporters of states that may wish to go this way and we would be pleased to discuss this with Egypt as Egypt develops its plans,” Rice told reporters in Cairo.

Abdel Aziz surmises that Egypt must have received the green light from the US before announcing the resumption of the program, an assumption that makes him suspect that Egypt accepted some conditions in return for US support.

“I fear that Egypt will be asked to sign an additional protocol of the NPT that would make all of Egypt’s nuclear activities and sites subject to inspection,” worries Abdel Aziz, who believes the protocol would undermine Egypt’s sovereignty as it allows International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to visit any facility without notice.

But Abd-Elsalam rules out any compromise. “Egypt has a clear position on that: It refuses to sign the protocol as long as Israel refuses to sign the NPT,” he counters.

Egypt has constantly led the Arab world in criticizing Israel’s refusal to sign the NPT treaty, contending that its position obstructs efforts to establish a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the region.

Senior government officials are preparing a bill on the use of nuclear energy for Parliament to debate when it reconvenes this month after summer recess.

Still, the program is not without its detractors. Salah E. Ibrahim, who was in charge of Egypt’s nuclear portfolio at the foreign ministry in the early 1980s, is sharply critical of the resumption of the program.

“The decision is not a nationalist one, but a partisan one, which means that the issue came from above and is not responding to needs. Yes, we have an energy problem, but that is because we misuse the [sources of] energy we have,” says Ibrahim. “We have enough sources of energy that are not dangerous, but we are one of the top countries that misuse the sources of energy. It is illogical to squander safe sources of energy and go looking for unsafe ones to produce electricity,” argues the former ambassador, a long-standing opponent of Egypt’s nuclear power program who has represented Egypt on several UN bodies.

To Ibrahim, the establishment of nuclear reactors in Egypt is particularly risky. “Simply put, the nuclear industry is very sophisticated and risky, and many problems that pertain to the use of nuclear power in generating electricity have not been solved,” says Ibrahim, who served as a member of Egypt’s delegation to IAEA in Vienna during his diplomatic career. He was also a member of the United Nations Joint Inspection Unit where he, during his mandate, monitored the performance of the IAEA.

“My worries are how to fit this sophisticated industry in an undisciplined society such as Egypt. Our experience in many industries has shown problems,” says Ibrahim “We can’t even run the railway system.”

Besides, he says, Egypt “has other more important things to work on, such as education and [public] services, and there is no urgent need for this [establishment of nuclear power reactors] at the moment or even in the near future,” he argues.

Egypt possesses two research reactors; the one provided by the Russians in 1961 and another 22MW reactor that was bought from Argentina in the 1990s. According to Abdel Aziz, Egypt’s research nuclear program is run by three bodies that deal with nuclear energy: the Authority for Nuclear Materials, the Authority for Nuclear Reactors and the Authority for Atomic Energy.

Since the freeze of Egypt’s nuclear program, those bodies had been concentrating on research and peaceful applications of atomic energy in the medical, industrial and agricultural arenas, Abdel Aziz explains.

The Ministry of Electricity and Energy announced last month that it would be importing enriched uranium, but did not specify from where. All countries rely on imported uranium except for states that belong to the nuclear club (countries recognized as capable of running the nuclear fuel cycle and enriching uranium) — and, of course, the handful of states whose nuclear programs have non-peaceful objectives.

The problem, of course, is that while enriched uranium is vital to the peaceful use of nuclear technology, it is also the component from which nuclear weapons are built.

“We can master the first part of the nuclear fuel cycle, which is the extraction of [raw] uranium from the mountains, and we have a big body in charge of this task, the Authority for Nuclear Materials in Moqattam,” says Abdel Aziz, adding that the raw material must then be enriched through one of a variety of processes (from thermal diffusion to gas centrifuging and chemical procedures) until it is ready for enrichment — an operation Egyptian scientists have yet to master.

“The enrichment process is very costly and needs know-how,” explains Abdel Aziz, who says Egypt must work to master the technology. “We should go in two parallel directions. We have to conclude deals to get the reactor and import the fuel. In the meantime, we should move forward with the enrichment, as Iran is doing,” he adds.

According to Ibrahim, if Egypt is going to buy reactors from the US, there is no possibility it could acquire the technology to enrich uranium locally. “The agreement signed between Egypt and the US in the 1980s states that Egypt does not have the right to enrich uranium locally that is why we were not going to buy from the US. We were about to buy from Germany.”

Younes says Egypt will hold talks with a number of countries with advanced nuclear power generation technology, including Germany, France, Canada, Australia, US, China, South Korea and Russia as possibilities.

The government is also going to be looking abroad for funding: Younes says he hopes foreign investors will chip in much of the $1.5-2 billion it will cost to build each of the reactors.

Abd-Elsalam agrees that scaring up the cash shouldn’t be a problem, particularly if the government invites the private sector to invest in this project. “From an economic viewpoint, nuclear reactors are very successful and profitable for the private sector,” he says. In the meantime, he points out that the country must already have enough funds to finance at least two reactors.

In 1980, Abdel Salam says, Sadat created the Alternative Energy Fund, a piggy bank of sorts to finance the nuclear power program. In theory, the AEF receives a cut of revenues from all exports of oil and gas. An estimated $3 billion should now be sitting in the fund, waiting for the resumption of the program.

“Does this money exist?” wonders Abd-Elsalam. “Was it invested? Was it spent on something else?”  et