Uranium enrichment company Urenco yesterday said it expects to commission the Tails Management Facility (TMF) at Capenhurst in the UK in 2018, after construction delays. The facility, to deconvert depleted uranium hexafluoride tails, had previously been expected to enter service this year.

Bulgaria started construction of a national repository for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste yesterday, marking the occasion with a ceremony. The repository is being built at the Radiana site, close to the Kozloduy nuclear power plant.

Global engineering consultancy Amec Foster Wheeler has been awarded two framework contracts by the UK's LLW Repository Ltd to carry out environmental safety case and waste characterisation work. The combined value of the contracts is about £4.0 million ($5.1 million).

All the basic conditions are now in place for remediation work to begin at several uranium legacy sites in Kyrgyzstan after the country ratified a framework agreement with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The European Union is to provide an initial contribution of €16.5 million ($19.4 million) for the work.

The first shipment of used nuclear fuel assemblies from Russian nuclear submarines has arrived at the radiochemical plant Mayak in Chelyabinsk, near the Ural Mountains, from the former base of the Russian Northern Fleet at Andreeva Bay.

The US Department of Energy's Transuranic Waste Processing Center, at Oak Ridge in Tennessee, has sent its first shipment of processed and treated transuranic waste since 2012 for permanent disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, in New Mexico. 

The USA's Holtec International has announced the early completion of all major civil construction work associated with the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) expansion project at Entergy's Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. The facility is undergoing complete defueling of its pool as a prelude to decommissioning.

Companies are being invited to bid for a contract to demolish the Dounreay Materials Test Reactor in Scotland. A contract notice will appear in the Official Journal of the European Union for the project estimated to be worth around £7 million ($9 million) over three years. A contractor is expected to be appointed in the first half of 2018.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved further actions related to its review of the Department of Energy's application for authorisation to construct a high-level radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Yucca Mountain has since 1987 been named in the US Nuclear Waste Policy Act as the sole initial repository for disposal of the country's used nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive wastes.

A unique piece of equipment that can compress a 55-gallon (200-litre) waste drum to a fifth of its original size has achieved 100,000 hours of operation at the US Department of Energy's Idaho site. Compacting has reduced the number of shipments of transuranic waste from the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project for disposal in New Mexico.

The US Nuclear Energy Institute has called for the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to reject a state of Texas request for payments from a fund intended for the disposal of used nuclear fuel. The request was made in a lawsuit filed in March by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton against federal agencies, including the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine has approved integrated systems testing of the interim used fuel storage facility at the site of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. The approval means the facility has officially entered the post-construction phase, the USA's Holtec International said yesterday.