A research programme into the safety of fast reactor fuel that has been suspended since the 1990s will resume with tests due to begin at Idaho National Laboratory next month.
 

Researchers have developed a method for assessing degradation of stainless steel components using laser beams that could reduce the time and expense needed for conducting safety checks of ageing nuclear power reactors.

A new mode of improved plasma confinement has been demonstrated at the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences announced. It said the new high-confinement and self-organising Super I-mode "represents the reliability and advancement of the machine itself but also offers insights into how to better maintain the plasma operating stably and for long duration".

Russia's TVEL will begin the first trials of its TVS-5 fuel design in 2023 and manufacture the first assemblies robotically, a conference heard.

Rosatom says that the development of nuclear fuel for its Modernised Floating Power Units project - featuring RITM-200S reactors - has been completed.

A technique has been developed to suck up and move a sludgy radioactive substance, known as flocculant, currently stored in legacy effluent tanks at the Sellafield site in Cumbria, UK.

France-based testing, inspection and certification services provider Bureau Veritas has entered into an agreement with ThorCon for the technology qualification and subsequent development of a 500 MWe floating ThorCon molten salt reactor (TMSR-500) to be deployed in Indonesia.

Experimental fuel assemblies for the BN-600 reactor incorporating BN-1200 fuel rods have been manufactured at the Siberian Chemical Combine in Seversk with the intention they will be loaded into the BN-600 fast neutron reactor at Beloyarsk, Russia, in 2023, Rosatom has said.

The first ever controlled fusion experiment to produce more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it was conducted at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on 5 December - a breakthrough that has been decades in the making.

The UK Space Agency and the National Nuclear Laboratory are to collaborate on the world's first space battery powered by americium-241. The isotope will be extracted from used nuclear fuel stored at the Sellafield site in Cumbria.

The advanced nuclear fuel company said it expects the first phase of work under two "innovative" agreements with Idaho National Laboratory, in collaboration with the US Department of Energy, will culminate in irradiation testing of fuel samples.

The UK Atomic Energy Authority and the UK Satellite Applications Catapult have partnered to demonstrate how advanced remote handling and robotics technology developed for fusion energy research can be used to provide maintenance for in-orbit satellites.