CAIRO (AP/AFP) -- Egypt's minister of electricity says the country plans to build its first nuclear power and have it fully operational by 2019.

The state-owned MENA news agency quotes Hassan Youniss as saying Saturday that Egypt also plans to build three more nuclear plants by 2025.
Youniss said Egypt will open international bidding for the plant's construction at the end of the year.
The facility is expected to cost between $1.5 billion and $1.8 billion.
President Hosni Mubarak first announced plans to build a number of nuclear power plants in 2007, reviving a program that was publicly shelved in the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl accident at a Soviet nuclear plant in what is now Ukraine.
Mubarak to seek reelection
President Mubarak, in power since 1981, is likely to seek reelection next year and serve for the rest of his life, according to U.S. diplomatic cables leaked on Thursday.
The document released by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks and posted online by British daily The Guardian also suggests Egypt's 2011 presidential election “will not be free or fair.”
“The next presidential elections are scheduled for 2011, and if Mubarak is still alive it is likely he will run again, and, inevitably, win,” said the cable from the U.S. embassy in Cairo dated May 2009 and signed by ambassador Margaret Scobey.
“Despite incessant whispered discussions, no one in Egypt has any certainty about who will eventually succeed Mubarak nor under what circumstances,” it said.
Mubarak, who underwent surgery in March to remove his gall bladder and a small growth on the intestine, has not yet said whether he will contest the election.
Photo: Hosni Mubarak has won five successive presidential elections
-