News

A report from the Kursk nuclear power plant in European Central Russia – near the Russian-Ukraine border – announced the completion of the base plate for the first of four VVER-TOI reactors planned for Kursk II.(read more)

Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) has cleared the Tokai Unit 2 reactor for a restart, but a resumption of operations is not expected until at least March 2021, when construction of new, post Fukushima Dai-ichi accident safety measures are completed.(read more)

An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection mission to Italy concluded on June 29 with indications that the country has made significant progress in preparing for future dismantling and decommissioning of two nuclear power plants.(read more)

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it had completed an eight-day inspection mission carried out on behalf of the United Arab Emirates government that focused on infrastructure development that would support its nuclear power ambitions.(read more)

The UK Planning Inspectorate said on 29 June that it had accepted Horizon Nuclear Power’s application for the Wylfa Newydd nuclear plant in Wales. (read more)

China General Nuclear Corporation (CGN) and French industrial EDF Group announced they had connected the Taishan Unit 1 reactor to the grid, marking a first for the EPR design. The feat was accomplished on June 29, the companies said.(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said this week it had approved the indirect transfer of Westinghouse Electric Co.’s licenses from Toshiba to Brookfield WEC Holdings, Inc., the investment company is reportedly seeking to buy Westinghouse for $4.6 billion.(read more)

Westinghouse Electric Company and its customers, China State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation (SNPTC) and CNNC Sanmen Nuclear Power Company Limited (SMNPC) announced today that the world’s first AP1000 nuclear power plant located in Sanmen, Zhejiang Province, China, has begun initial connection to the electrical grid. (read more)

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO) said that it had shut down the medical isotope producing reactor at Lucas Heights in order to repair a mechanical problem that ANSTO said was not related to two recent spills of radioactive material.(read more)

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics said the Wendlestein 7-X stellarator had broken its previously set record for temperature and plasma density on June 25, confirming its performance capabilities with upgraded components.(read more)

Orano, formerly Areva, has signed an agreement with Britain's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) defined as a "roadmap of collaboration’ according to the company, meant to pave the way for cooperation in advancing civil nuclear decommissioning, clean-up and hazard reduction(read more)

GE Power said it had begun manufacturing the first rotor for turbines that will be installed at the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in Bridgewater, Somerset in England. When complete, the Arabelle steam turbines will be among the largest in the world, producing 1770 MWe each and coming in longer than the Airbus 380 model.(read more)

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced nearly $64 million in awards for 89 advanced nuclear energy technology projects, including awards to 39 U.S. universities in 29 states.(read more)

General Electric said Tuesday that it had signed a strategic cooperation agreement for the planned construction of 6 EPR reactors at the Jaitapur site, Maharashtra, India.(read more)

Britain's Office of Nuclear Regulation said this week that the release of water at the Sellafield site on March 1 of this year during extremely cold weather included as much as 680 cubic meters (more than 24,000 cubic feet) of water. But the regulator said the estimate of the amount water that became contaminated before it was cleaned up was conservative, even while the effect on the environment was "negligible."(read more)

EDF and VEOLIA said Tuesday they had entered a partnership agreement to co-develop remote control solutions for dismantling gas-cooled reactors (natural uranium graphite gas) and for vitrifying radioactive waste, in France and other locations around the globe.(read more)

An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team of experts said Bulgaria is committed to the safe management of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel, but recommended changes the country could make for long-term improvements.(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Thursday it had begun a Special Inspection at the Clinton nuclear power plant to review the circumstances surrounding problems with the emergency diesel generators at the plant that could not operate for approximately three days during a recent refueling outage.(read more)

Westinghouse Electric Company announced two major milestones with its AP1000 reactors under construction in China on Thursday. Among the good news for the company, it was announced, along with China State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation (SNPTC) that the Sanmen Unit 1 reactor in Zhejiang Province had obtained its first successfully completed initial criticality, a first for the Westinghouse designed reactor.(read more)

Westinghouse and its customers, China State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation (SNPTC) and Shangdong Nuclear Power Company Limited (SDNPC) said Thursday that a second AP1000, Haiyang Unit 1, had begun to receive fuel into its core.(read more)

Prompted by the high cost of complying with new post-Fukushima Dai-ichi accident safety measures, the Japan Nuclear Regulation Authority on June 13 said it had approved of a decommissioning plan for the Tokai reprocessing plant in Ibaraki Prefecture.(read more)

Bruce Power said it had signed a Major Component Replacement Contract with the Shoreline Power Group Consortium, which will be responsible for successfully executing the heart of the company’s multi-year Life-Extension program, which started in 2016.(read more)

The Kyushu Electric Power Company has restarted Unit 4 at the Genkai Nuclear Power Plant in the Saga Prefecture of Japan, the company announced.(read more)

Eight days after announcing the long-delayed Unit 3 reactor at the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant in Finland would be ready to enter commercial operations in May 2019, the owner of the plant has said that some re-calibrations were needed and some hot functional testing completed in early June would need to be repeated, delaying the unit's expected operational phase by an additional four months.(read more)

A call to solicit interest in small modular reactors (SMR) in Canada has established a strong response from interested parties, the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) said.(read more)

President Donald Trump stepped into the debate on securing the national electricity resources by directing grid operators to purchase power from economically troubled nuclear power and coal-fired power plants.(read more)

The east African nation of nation of Tanzania is poised to enter the market as a uranium producer, but is holding back until the price of the fissile metal rises, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a news release Monday.(read more)

Chen Hua, chairman of the China National Nuclear Power Corporation, has said that the first completed Westinghouse-designed AP1000 reactor would reach first criticality by the end of June and that it remained on track to enter commercial operations status by the end of November, Science Daily reported.(read more)

Pacific Gas and Electric, owners of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant n San Louis Obispo County near Los Angeles, have met a legal challenge with a verdict in an California appeals court that will permit continued leasing of the property on which the plant sits.(read more)

The Tokyo Electric Power Company said Thursday that it would begin to formulate a plan to decommission the Fukushima Dai-ni nuclear generating station, a four-unit power plant that is the closest power plant to the Fukushima Dai-ichi facility that suffered three reactor meltdowns in 2011.(read more)

Westinghouse Electric Company today announced the signing of a contract for manufacture and delivery of boiling water reactor (BWR) fuel to Cofrentes Nuclear Power Plant (CNC) in Spain in 2019 and 2021. CNC is wholly owned by Iberdrola Generación Nuclear S.A.(read more)

It’s time to put Darlington Nuclear’s Unit 2 reactor back together, Ontario Power Generation announced Tuesday.(read more)

Workers outfitted Unit 5 of the Hongyanhe nuclear power plant in China with its third and final steam generator as of June 10, the China Nuclear Industry 23 Construction Limited (CNI23) has announced.(read more)

The IAEA said Monday it had issued a challenge for data specialists to come up models that would open the door for new materials to be used to build fusion reactors.(read more)

Union officials at General Electric's manufacturing division in Salem, Virginia, where the company has made power-generation turbines for decades, said they had received a letter of intent advising them that GE intends to close down its manufacturing at the facility that once employed about 3,500 workers.(read more)

Russia's nuclear engineer and construction giant Rosatom has signed a deal in China that calls for the construction of four Russian-designed VVER-1200 reactors, two of which are slated for the Xudabao nuclear facility, while two will be built at the Tiawan nuclear generating station in Jiangsu Province.(read more)

SNC-Lavalin, U.S. subsidiary of SNC Lavalin Nuclear of Canada, has signed a memorandum of understanding that sets the company up to be the primary engineer and construction contractor for the former TVA Bellefonte nuclear power plant project in Hollywood, Alabama, that was purchased at auction by Franklin Haney's Nuclear Development LLC in November of 2016.(read more)

A federal judge in South Carolina has temporarily put a halt to the federal government's plan to back out of the mixed oxide fuel (MOX) project at the Savannah River Site that the Department of Energy recently announced would be shut down.(read more)

United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Friday that a team of experts had completed a nuclear security advisory mission in Switzerland, carried out at the request of the Swiss Government.(read more)

Small modular reactor (SMR) developer NuScale said Wednesday it had discovered 20 percent more power than originally planned in the SMR it is developing.(read more)

Westinghouse Electric Company said Thursday that it was awarded $5 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. The funding will be used to develop a self-regulating solid core block (SCB) that employs solid materials (instead of bulk liquid flow or moving parts) to inherently self-regulate the reaction rate in a nuclear reactor.(read more)

Comprehensive drone contracting company Texo Drone Survey said in late May that it had carried out an “internal UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) inspection of a live nuclear asset – a first for the nuclear industry.(read more)

French nuclear power service company Orano said in May that it had signed a contract with Ukrainian utility EnergoAtom to assessing the feasibility of reprocessing services of spent fuel assemblies of Ukrainian VVER-1000 nuclear reactors in Orano la Hague facility.(read more)

The long-delayed Unit 3 at Finland’s Olkiluoto NPP (OL3) power plant is a step closer to start up with hot functional testing completed in May, Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) said in a statement. ...(read more)

A draft memo circulated by the Trump administration that was made public by Bloomberg News has reinvigorated the national debate on energy security with its immediate focus the coal and nuclear power industries both of which are warning policymakers that dependence on renewable power sources could contribute to grid insecurity.(read more)

Armenia's Energy Minister Arur Grigoryan told reporters last week that the government had permission from the European Union to proceed with refurbishment projects that would extend the life of the country's nuclear power plant until 2026, according to news reports.(read more)

The German cabinet has approved of a plan that would compensate three utility companies – RWE, Vattenfall and E.ON – for the losses incurred by the closure of their nuclear power plants that were tripped up by the government's on-again, off-again nuclear power policies.(read more)

Nawah, the operator of the unfinished four-unit Barakah nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates, said Tuesday that startup of the first unit at the plant – the first nuclear power plant in the region – would be delayed again due to issues related to its “readiness” to operate the facility.(read more)

The United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday that Bahrain had signed its first Country Program Framework that formally initiates its interest in various priorities related to the transfer of nuclear technology and international cooperation.(read more)

South Carolina, a state with two multi-billion dollar nuclear power-related projects canceled in the middle of construction, is suing the federal government over the Department of Energy's abrupt decision last week to stop work an a facility that would have processed weapons-grade plutonium into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel for nuclear power plants.(read more)