Jordan has signed a $10bn deal with Russia to build the kingdom’s first nuclear power plant, with two 1,000-megawatt reactors in the country’s north.
The deal, signed in the Jordanian capital, Amman, on Tuesday caps efforts of the energy-poor kingdom to attain energy sufficiency and reduce imports in this area. Jordan lacks any local energy sources and imports 96 percent of its electricity.
The violence in neighbouring Iraq and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula has threatened and in many cases, completely cut off electricity supplies in Jordan.
According to the state’s Petra news agency, Jordan plans to finish construction of the plant in Amra by 2022. There are hope it will be fueled with uranium mined in Jordan.
The deal was signed with Russia’s state-owned Rosatom company.
“As you know, we lost the oil from Iraq, natural gas from Egypt, and the country has been bleeding and losing on an average $3bn every year,” said Khalid Toukan, head of the Jordanian Atomic Energy Commission.
“Nuclear power is definitely one of the solutions to graduate from total dependency on oil and gas,” he added.
