The structure of the medical radioisotope supply chain is impeding the provision of technetium-99m, a new report by an OECD Nuclear Energy Agency high-level group has found. Supplies of the world's most widely used medical radioisotope remain fragile.

China has approved the decommissioning plan for its first nuclear reactor - the Heavy Water Research Reactor, which will be undertaken by the China Institute of Atomic Energy. CIAE received government approval of the plan on 4 November.

Belgian Tractebel and Spanish Empresarios Agrupados yesterday signed a EUR7.6 million (USD8.4 million) contract for the design of buildings and utilities for the Myrhha accelerator-driven research reactor at the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre's site in Mol, Belgium.

The Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group's plans for the processing and disposal of radioactive wastes from the Petten research reactor in the Netherlands over the next three years have been approved by the country's nuclear regulator. However, NRG must submit for approval an updated plan by mid-2022.

Russia and Serbia have signed an intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in the construction of a Centre for Nuclear Science, Technology and Innovation in Serbia.

China's first lead-bismuth alloy zero-power reactor - Qixing (Venus) III - achieved first criticality on 9 October, the China Institute of Atomic Energy has announced. The milestone marks the start of China's core physics experiments into liquid metal cooled fast reactors.

Research reactors in Canada and the Netherlands will work together to create a dual supply of the medical isotope iodine-125, McMaster University and NRG have announced. The collaboration is a response to a worldwide shortage of the product in 2017.
 

US Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management contractors have used new techniques, including the use of a diamond wire saw, in a collaborative effort to demolish a legacy research reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory.

Ownership of Italy's Ispra-1 research reactor has officially been transferred to Societa Gestione Impianti Nucleari SpA (Sogin), the state-owned company responsible for dismantling the country's nuclear power plants. Decommissioning of the reactor, which ceased operation in 1973, will begin once Sogin's application has been approved.

Ahead of its decommissioning, the low-enriched uranium fuel has been removed from the Saskatchewan Research Council's Slowpoke-2 research reactor in Saskatoon and transported to the USA.

An irradiation test on molten nuclear fuel salts inside the High Flux Reactor has been completed at Petten in the Netherlands. The results will yield new data on the safe operation of molten salt reactors.

Atommash, part of the Volgodonsk branch of AEM Technology, has completed hydraulic tests of the reactor vessel of the MBIR multipurpose sodium-cooled fast neutron research reactor. MBIR is under construction at the site of the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors at Dmitrovgrad, which is in Russia's Ulyanovsk region.