Areva Resources Canada and researchers at the University of Saskatchewan have completed a major study on the long-term condition of uranium mill tailings at the McClean Lake mill using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron facility.

Hungary and China have signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in education and research and development in the nuclear power sector. Hungary's national development minister Miklós Seszták and the head of China's National Energy Administration Nur Bekri signed the agreement in Budapest on 26 May.

A test container that has been stored in a tunnel at the Grimsel underground laboratory in Switzerland for 18 years is being removed as the experiment is dismantled. The full-scale experiment set out to determine the effects of heat from high-level waste on the surrounding rock and backfill material.

A group of US electric utilities has formally expressed interest in Lightbridge Corporation's novel metallic fuel design to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Rosenergoatom has reportedly postponed construction of the BN-1200 sodium-cooled fast neutron reactor at the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant "indefinitely" on the need to improve fuel for the reactor and amid speculation about the cost-effectiveness of the project.

Porvair Filtration Group has announced its role in the High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor currently being developed at Tsinghua University in China. The British company said the technology has the potential to create affordable and reliable energy in some of the world's poorest and most remote countries.

At the heart of the modern energy debate is a struggle between the need for more energy globally, while simultaneously achieving lower emissions. Nuclear energy is uniquely positioned to help respond to these duelling necessities, but innovative advancements must overcome considerable barriers, writes Todd Allen.

NuScale Power has completed fabrication and assembly of a full-scale upper module mock-up of its NuScale small modular reactor.

The underground tunnel in which the Full-scale Emplacement Experiment will be carried out at the Mont Terri Rock Laboratory in Switzerland has been sealed and monitoring has begun. The experiment aims to simulate the conditions within a repository containing high-level radioactive waste.

Researchers from General Atomics and the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have made a major breakthrough in understanding how potentially damaging heat bursts inside a fusion reactor can be controlled.

State-owned R&D companies from Argentina and Saudi Arabia have set up a joint venture company, Invania, to develop nuclear technology for Saudi Arabia's nuclear power program.

Rusatom Overseas is aiming to sell desalination facilities integrated with large capacity nuclear power plants to Russia's export markets.