South Korea-supplied unit will undergo testing before commercial operation

The Barakah nuclear power station has four nuclear plants supplied by South Korea. Courtesy Enec.

Unit 4 of the Barakah nuclear power station in the United Arab Emirates has been started up and will be prepared for connection to the national electricity grid “in the coming weeks”, Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation.

Enec, which is responsible for the deployment and ownership of nuclear energy plants in the UAE, said the startup marks the plant’s initial production of heat through nuclear fission.

Once the testing is complete and commercial operations begin, Unit 4 will raise Barakah’s total electricity generation capacity to 5,600 MW, equivalent to 25% of the UAE’s electricity needs, delivering more than 40 TWh of electricity per year.

The three commercially operating Units at Barakah – the first commercial nuclear facility in the Arab world – are already generating more than 30 TWh of electricity.

Barakah-4 is the fourth South Korea-supplied APR1400 at the Barakah station, on the Persian Gulf coast west of the city of Abu Dhabi.

Commercial operation began at Barakah-3 in February 2023. Barakah-1 began commercial operation in April 2021 and Barakah-2 in March 2022.

Enec said: “Each Unit has been started up more efficiently than the previous unit, as institutional knowledge and experience are applied to each subsequent unit. Unit 3 was delivered four months faster than the Unit 2 schedule, and five months faster than the Unit 1 schedule, demonstrating the significant benefit of building multiple units within a phased timeline.”

The Barakah-4 nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates. Courtesy Enec.