The Gundremmingen B boiling water reactor in southern Germany was disconnected from the grid on 31 December after 33 years of operation. The government had ordered the plant to close by the end of last year as part of the country's energy transition.

Construction of China's 600 MWe demonstration fast reactor at Xiapu, Fujian province, has officially begun with the pouring of the first concrete for the reactor's basemat. The reactor is scheduled to begin commercial operation by 2023.

The Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian Parliament, has approved amendments to the law governing Rosatom, which give the state nuclear corporation's supervisory board the power to approve the development and financing of nuclear power projects. The law was presented by Alexey Dmitrienko, a member of the Federation Council's economic policy committee, on 26 December.

An anti-nuclear activist in the 1970s was afraid of tyranny. An anti-nuclear activist now is afraid of radiation. But tyranny didn't happen and the effects of radiation are misunderstood. The threat of climate change IS real and, to fight it, we need nuclear power, writes Scott L. Montgomery.

A bill that would recognise the environmental and fuel diversity attributes of New Jersey's nuclear power plants has been approved by House and Senate utility committees and will now go forward to the full legislative body.

Duncan Hawthorne, CEO of Horizon Nuclear Power, says a consensus is forming across government and industry that the Hinkley financing model - which involved EDF and its Chinese partner CGN covering the entire cost of construction - will not be repeated, according to his comments to the Financial Times published yesterday. Horizon is the UK subsidiary of Hitachi-GE, which regulators informed last week had successfully completed the Generic Design Assessment process for its UK Advanced Boiling Water Reactor.

The day before British Prime Minister Theresa May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker agreed a deal to complete the first phase of Brexit negotiations, a senior civil servant assured the nuclear industry that the British government aimed to achieve a smooth departure from the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). Meanwhile, European electricity association Eurelectric has outlined the objectives it says are needed for a "sound Brexit transition".

A report prepared for Connecticut's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and its Public Utilities Regulatory Authority has found that Dominion Energy's Millstone nuclear power plant is likely to operate profitably from the early 2020s to the mid-2030s, even under harsh market and operating cost assumptions.

A number of Finnish cities have received political initiatives to evaluate the feasibility of using small modular reactors (SMRs) instead of fossil fuels to provide district heating, according to Energy for Humanity. A recent study looked at completely decarbonising electricity, transport and heating in Helsinki through the use of small, advanced reactors.

A Japanese high court has today overruled a lower court decision that allowed Shikoku Electric Power Company to continue operating unit 3 of its Ikata nuclear power plant in Ehime Prefecture. Ikata 3 is one of five units that have so far restarted since Japan took all its operable reactors offline for safety checks following the March 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

World Nuclear Association yesterday presented its Harmony programme to members of Foratom, the Brussels-based trade association for the nuclear energy industry in Europe. Harmony is the nuclear industry vision for the future of electricity and how nuclear energy can help the world achieve its 2-degree climate target.

Around two-thirds of Poles believe the construction of a nuclear power plant in the country is a good way to combat climate change, according to a survey commissioned by the Polish Energy Ministry. A similar proportion support the construction of power reactors to increase the country's energy security.