The head of Rosatom spoke about foreign sabotage during the construction of a nuclear power plant in Egypt

Director of the Rosatom Corporation Alexey Likhachev said, speaking at the Russia-Africa summit, which is taking place in Moscow, that cases of sabotage were recorded during the construction of the Al-Dabaa nuclear power plant in Egypt. Al-Arabiya reports this.

“During the implementation of the same Egyptian project, we encountered a pandemic, we encountered sanctions, we encountered real sabotage from some countries against this project. But we were able to overcome this,” the official said, without mentioning specific countries.

Let us recall that in August, Politico reported that it had gained access to an internal document sent to a representative of the Rosatom corporation by the Egyptian Nuclear Power Plants Authority. The document talks about violations during the construction of the Al-Dabaa nuclear power plant.

The customer complains about numerous defects in various components of the plant, a violation of the nuclear safety culture and deliberate negligence on the part of one of Rosatom’s official representatives.

The letter is just one of the documents that were shown to the publication by an anonymous intelligence official, and which are being published for the first time. Among them are confidential internal reports describing delays in construction and noting that employees of the Russian corporation themselves have expressed concerns about the engineering side of the project.

In particular, defects were discovered in the concrete foundation of three power units; it took a year to eliminate the defect. At the same time, Rosatom misled the customer, trying to prove through falsifications that the project was half completed, while in fact the main facilities were at the stage of underground construction.

It also talks about the unprofessional corporate culture of Rosatom: the presence of prohibited alcoholic beverages right in the workplace, falsification of passes, impersonation of others, filming during construction, injuries in the workplace. All this negatively affected the reputation of the project.