El Dabaa
الضبعة | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Country | Egypt |
Governorate | Matrouh |
Population | |
• Estimate (2017) | 49,805 |
Time zone | UTC+2 (EST) |
El Dabaa (Arabic: الضبعة pronounced [edˈdɑbʕɑ]) is a town in the Matrouh Governorate, Egypt. It lies 296 kilometres (184 mi) from Cairo on the north coast and is served by the El Alamain International Airport. It is famous for the Russian technology nuclear power plant being constructed to the north east of the city boundaries.[1]
As of 2017, El Dabaa had an estimated population of 49,805.
In 2012, a story published in the news section of Nature Journal website, stated that:"... [radioactive] material was taken from a laboratory at the El Dabaa nuclear power plant on the country's Mediterranean coast."[2] But as of 2020, the El Dabaa nuclear power plant was only bare land.[3] As of 2017, only the first stage of preliminary engineering survey was conducted and the hydrographic and hydrological survey work was carried on. The construction on the plant was expected to start in 2020, but at the beginning of 2021 it was still in the waiting.[4]
El Dabaa has been targeted by protesters who are claiming that their land was wrongly taken by the government to make way for the nuclear plant. As of 2012, and as a result of those protests, the proposed construction site[3] was shut down.[2] The protests that targeted El Dabaa was ended by the court announcing that they had the right to the land.[citation needed]