CAIRO — El Dabaa Atomic Technical School, which is the first of its kind in Egypt, admitted 75 students on Nov. 19 to officially start studying in its temporary headquarters at the Advanced Technical School for Maintenance Technology in Madinat Nasr. The school will be training students at the Nuclear Power Plants Authority (NPPA) and the Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority (EAEA).

After the first semester, the students will then move to the permanent headquarters in El Dabaa city, Matrouh governorate, to attend the second semester in March. The school’s objective is to form a new generation of technicians trained on the latest technologies used in managing and operating nuclear plants. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is behind the creation of the school, which will be officially inaugurated during the second semester in March after student dorms and teachers’ facilities are completed.

Sameer el-Neely, the deputy minister of education in Matrouh, told Al-Monitor that the Egyptian dream to establish the El Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant requires a disciplined, committed and highly skilled as well as well-trained labor force. Therefore, the political leadership made the decision to establish the school so that graduates would directly join work at the El Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant.

In February 2015, Sisi and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin signed an agreement to establish two nuclear power plants to generate electricity in El Dabaa. The first plant is expected to start operating in 2019, while the construction of Egypt’s first nuclear reactor will be completed and start operating in 2025.