News

The K-3 Unit of Karachi nuclear power plant in Pakistan, the second overseas nuclear power unit adopting HPR1000 technology, finished first fuel loading on the last day of 2021, China National Nuclear Corporation said.(read more)

The first criticality of the EPR reactor installed at unit 3 of the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant in Finland was achieved on 21 December, power utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) announced.(read more)

The concreting of the fifth tier of the inner containment of Unit 2 reactor building of Rooppur NPP (Bangladesh) was completed on December 24, Russian nuclear powerhouse Rosatom said this week. (read more)

Rosatom's fuel component TVEL Fuel Company has launched the new fabrication facility for manufacturing of TVS-K nuclear fuel for PWR reactors at the site of Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant, one of the world’s major nuclear fuel enterprises, Rosatom announced.(read more)

Russia’s state-owned nuclear giant said December 20 that construction of Kudankulam Unit 6 began with the first foundational concrete pour for the reactor building in Tamil Nadu, India.(read more)

Britain’s nuclear industry processing and technology center Sellafield said that preparation work for returning high-level waste back to overseas customers has been completed.(read more)

French reactor business Framatome said this week it had been awarded the contract to upgrade the incore instrumentation systems for units 1 and 2 at Dominion Energy’s Surry Nuclear Power Station as part of its Subsequent License Renewal program.(read more)

Construction teams in Turkey have begun constructing the foundation slab for the pump station of Akkuyu NPP Unit 1., a Rosatom-led project with four nuclear plants planned.(read more)

Finland’s power company Teollisuuden Voima Oyi (TVO) said Wednesday it had sent its application in to the country’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority asking permission to start up the Olkiluoto 3 EPR power plant and to move forward with initial testing of the unit.(read more)

About 4,000 households in Haiyan county in Zhejiang province in Southern China, had the heat turned on this week (December 3) thanks to a demonstration project developed by the China National Nuclear Corporation.(read more)

Russia's state-owned nuclear power Rosatom said Tuesday that corporation delegates and Nicaraguan officials on December 7 signed a Memorandum of Understanding that paves the way for cooperation on an array of nuclear technologies.(read more)

ROSATOM, French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), and French utility EDF signed a joint declaration of intent in Paris Wednesday to develop their long-term R&D collaboration in the field of civil nuclear power.(read more)

The U.S. Department of Energy on the last day of November launched a renewed effort to find a federal solution to storage of spent nuclear fuel after attempts to push Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a permanent storage repository was withdrawn by the Obama administration.(read more)

Westinghouse Electric Company said Wednesday, it had signed an historic Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with French utility EDF paving the way for Cobalt-60 radioisotope production in select Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) owned and operated by EDF in France.(read more)

Concrete pouring for the BREST-OD-300’s nuclear island’s foundation slab has been completed after a round-the-clock pour, Russian state-owned Rosatom Corp. has announced.(read more)

SNC-Lavalin Group said subsidiary Candu Energy had signed a 12-month, $8.4 million contract from Romanian firm, EnergoNuclear S.A., to provide engineering services during the preparatory stage of a precursor project to complete CANDU Units 3 & 4 in Romania. (read more)

U.S. nuclear power giant Westinghouse Electric Company said Monday that it had signed a contract with Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear utility Energoatom for procurement of “long-lead items for [Ukraine’s] first Westinghouse AP1000” reactor.(read more)

Russia's state-owned nuclear power corporation Rosatom said that operational life extension projects at the Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant's Unit 2 in Armenia had been completed. The projects, which began in 2015, have extended the life of the plant (read more)

Unit 3 of the Karachi nuclear power plant in Pakistan completed hot functional testing on Nov 4 ahead of schedule, the China National Nuclear Corporation announced last week.(read more)

China National Nuclear Corporation said this week that the No. 2 reactor of Shidaowan Nuclear Power Plant in East China's Shandong province reached its first criticality on Nov 11. (read more)

Petrozavodsk Branch of JSC AEM-Technologies, a part of machine-building division of Rosatom State Corporation Atomenergomash, in conjunction with a Karelian regional branch of the Russian Engineering Union, has brought off the check fit-up of the first housing for the reactor coolant pump set (RCPS) intended for Akkuyu NPP, power unit No. 2 being under construction in Turkey.(read more)

Framatome on Monday announced the completion of its purchase of Rolls Royce Civil Nuclear Instrumentation and Control (I&C).(read more)

British industrial Rolls-Royce said this week that announced today that following an equity funding drive it had raised enough to establish the Rolls-Royce Small Modular Reactor (SMR) business designed to "bring forward and deliver at scale the next generation of low cost, low carbon nuclear power technology.(read more)

U.S. small modular reactor developer NuScale in a joint statement with Romania's Nuclearelectrica, said the they had mapped out an agreement that would potentially site Romania as the first European country to undertake a modular reactor project, potentially involving 12 SMRs. (read more)

Turkish nuclear power regulators, the Nuclear Regulatory Authority Board, said it had agreed to issue a construction license for Unit 4 of the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant. The license was awarded to Akkuyu Nuclear JSC and signifies the official start of construction and installation work for the reactor.(read more)

French nuclear services giant Framatome said Tuesday it had delivered industry’s first nuclear 100 percent accident tolerant fuel assembly (ATF) to Exelon Generation’s Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Lusby, Maryland., building on its PROtect program that has completed preliminary tests in the United States and Switzerland.(read more)

The Palo Verde Generating Station near Phoenix, Arizona, will be the site of a PNW Hydrogen LLC project designed to use the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station for hydrogen production with assistance from the Department of Energy.(read more)

U.S. nuclear fuel technology developer Lightbridge Ltd. announce the completion of work under the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) voucher program to support the development of Lightbridge Fuel, in collaboration with Idaho National Laboratory (INL).(read more)

Russia's state-owned nuclear power corporation Rosatom announced this week that the Elemash Machine-building plant, a fabrication facility of ROSATOM’s TVEL Fuel Company in the Moscow region, had successfully manufactured an experimental nuclear fuel assembly for the yet to be built RITM-200N reactor.(read more)

The Petrozavodsk Branch of AEM-Technologies has performed, along with Karelian Regional Branch of the Russian Engineering Union, a series of hydraulic tests on the first casing of the reactor coolant pump set (RCPS) intended for the second power unit of Rooppur NPP (People’s Republic of Bangladesh).(read more)

Russian state-owned nuclear power corporation Rosatom said it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding that concerns cooperation in the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes with the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN).(read more)

Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) this week announced the completion of fuel loading in the Shin Hanul Unit 1 reactor, which is now primed to undergo operational tests as the final step before achieving status as a commercially viable reactor.(read more)

To avoid an energy crisis, Bangladesh is willing to build a second nuclear power plant, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said this week in conjunction with a construction milestone reached at the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant site, according to news reports.(read more)

Orano group announced the completion of the construction of the stable isotopes laboratory on the Orano Tricastin site.(read more)

Atommash, AEM-Technologies, JSC Branch in Volgodonsk (a part of the machine-building division of the Rosatom state corporation, has shipped reactor internals for the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant’s No. 2 unit, which is under construction in the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, the company announced.(read more)

Westinghouse Electric Company said Monday it had signed a definitive agreement with Spanish multinationals Iberdrola and Naturgy to acquire 50 percent of engineering companyTecnatom in a move the company says "advances the strategy to expand its technical nuclear outage, engineering, and digital services capabilities worldwide."(read more)

Russian nuclear corporation Rosatom has announced the development of a new process for the production of zirconium sponge material to be used in nuclear plant fuel assemblies. The process was developed at the Chepetsky Mechanical Plant (ChMP), a division of Rosatom’s TVEL Fuel Company in Glazov, Russia in the Udmurt Republic.(read more)

Rosatom said this week that hot functional test of the reactor plant at Unit 2 of Belarus NPP had been completed successfully.(read more)

U.S. small modular reactor developer NuScale Power said it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with KGHM Polska Miedź S.A. (KGHM) and Piela Business Engineering (PBE) to explore together the deployment of NuScale’s small modular reactor (SMR) technology as a coal-power replacement in Poland.(read more)

The international project to deter rhinoceros poaching by using radioisotopes to enhance detection techniques has passed its first hurdle, Russian nuclear corporation Rosatom has announced.(read more)

Tokamak Energy said this week it had demonstrated a transformative magnet protection technology that improves the commercial viability of fusion power plants. (read more)

It was a long trip and a move-over load, but Russian nuclear power corporation Rosatom said this week the “atomic heart” of the future Kursk II Unit 1 reactor--the VVER-TOI reactor pressure vessel VVER-TOI--had arrived its final destination, the construction site in Kurchatov in southwestern Russia.(read more)

The first Russian-made fuel bundles with experimental ATF fuel rods (Advanced Technology Fuel) have been loaded into VVER-1000 reactor core at the power unit 2 of the Rostov NPP in South-West Russia, which has resumed operations after the scheduled maintenance and refueling, Rosatom said this week.(read more)

Canadian uranium producer Cameco and U.S. fuel and plant engineering firm X-energy announced they have entered a non-binding and non-exclusive Memorandum of Understanding to explore possible areas of cooperation to support the potential future deployment, fuelling and servicing of Xe-100 small modular reactors(read more)

An eleventh-hour vote in the Illinois capital kept Exelon Generation’s hand away from the off switch on two nuclear power plants Tuesday, as the state Senate approved a comprehensive energy bill that included credit to nuclear plants for their non-carbon producing electricity generation.(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it had issued a license to Interim Storage Partners LLC to construct and operate a consolidated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in Andrews, Texas.(read more)

Russian nuclear corporation Rosatom said this week that the first group of Egyptian technicians began training at the St. Petersburg branch of Rosatom’s Technical Academy in anticipation of operations work at the planned El Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant.(read more)

Call it the year’s most extraordinary yard sale. In a recent working trip to the United States, the head of Ukraine’s National Nuclear Energy Generating Company (Energoatom) visited Westinghouse Electric’s equipment warehouses in South Carolina to check out large components once designated for the now-abandoned V.C. Summer expansion project. (read more)

For the first time, unique work was carried out at the Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant on the recovery annealing of the plant's Unit 2 PWR-440 reactor vessel. The goal is to extend the service life...(read more)

Volgodonsk Branch of JSC AEM-technology, part of the engineering division of “Rosatom” State Corporation called Atomenergomash, has started long-cycle operation to manufacture the bottom of the nuclear reactor for Unit 3 of Akkuyu NPP under construction in Turkey.(read more)