The UK Space Agency and Nuclear Decommissioning Agency have issued a challenge to smaller businesses and university start-ups to research and develop satellite-enabled technologies that could help support the country's nuclear decommissioning efforts.

TVEL, the nuclear fuel manufacturer subsidiary of Russia's Rosatom, has completed the first phase of testing its accident-tolerant fuel in a reactor, at the State Research Institute of Atomic Reactors in Dimitrovgrad.

Two Canadian research organisations have completed the first joint production run of actinium-225 (Ac-225), one of the rarest medical radioisotopes in the world. The high-purity isotope was produced using a high-energy cyclotron at the TRIUMF particle accelerator centre in Vancouver and processed at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories' (CNL) Chalk River laboratories in Ontario.

A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between the US Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to share technical expertise and computing resources to accelerate the deployment of advanced nuclear technologies.

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.

Terrestrial Energy and NRG have begun an irradiation programme to analyse the behaviour of graphite under the conditions it will experience during the seven-year life of a Terrestrial Energy Integrated Molten Salt Reactor core unit.

Romanian utility Nuclearelectrica has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Fostering ALFRED Construction consortium regarding cooperation on the development of the Advanced Lead Fast Reactor European Demonstrator (ALFRED). A demonstration unit is planned to be constructed in Romania.

The UK government has committed GBP220 million (USD270 million) over four years for the conceptual design of the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP). The STEP programme aims to construct a fusion power plant based on the design by 2040.

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.

A project to demonstrate the production of hydrogen in integrated energy systems at US nuclear power plants is one of three selected by the US Department of Energy to receive a share of USD15 million in its latest announcement of project selectees. At the same time, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has awarded USD15 million in grants to support the development of the country's future nuclear workforce.

Lead test assemblies of Westinghouse EnCore fuel rods containing uranium silicide fuel pellets have been loaded into a commercial nuclear power plant for the first time. The fuels, developed through the US Department of Energy's accident tolerant fuels programme, were loaded into Exelon's Byron unit 2 during a scheduled refuelling outage.

Nuclear research and innovation projects need to receive a higher level of financial support from the European Union in order to help the bloc meet its climate and energy goals, according to a new position paper issued by Foratom.