Canadian Nuclear Laboratories is to take part in the decommissioning of a prototype boiling water reactor in Lingen, Germany under a subcontract awarded by Atkins Energy Germany GmbH. The four-year contract includes the secondment of CNL staff as well as the provision of specialist equipment services and will see CNL for the first time apply skills and capabilities gained from Canadian decommissioning projects in the international market.

Germany's phase-out of nuclear power and increased use instead of fossil fuels could have led to 1100 additional deaths each year from air pollution, according to a study by economists at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of California at Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon University.

Unit 2 of Germany's Philippsburg nuclear power plant was disconnected from the grid at 6.55pm on 31 December, as planned, marking the end of 35 years of operation. Operator EnBW said it will begin dismantling the unit in the second half of this year.

The Mühleberg nuclear power plant in Switzerland today ended generation after 47 years in operation. Meanwhile, Ringhals unit 2 in Sweden and Philippsburg unit 2 in Germany are preparing to shut down by the end of 2019.

Rusatom Automated Control Systems, a subsidiary of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom, and the Franco-German consortium Framatome-Siemens have signed an agreement to manufacture, deliver and commission automated process control systems for units 5 and 6 of the Paks nuclear power plant in Hungary. The contract was awarded by competitive tender, Rosatom said.

Germany is continuing to manage its radioactive waste and used fuel in a safe and responsible manner, an International Atomic Energy Agency mission has concluded. However, it noted areas for potential improvement.

A group of nearly 100 Polish environmentalists and scientists has written an open letter to the leadership and people of Germany asking the country to reconsider its nuclear phaseout plans.

Germany's PreussenElektra has placed an order for 12 CASTOR used fuel transport and storage casks with GNS Gesellschaft für Nuklear-Service. The supplier said the deal was worth "well over" EUR20 million (USD22.6 million).

Germany's nuclear safety regime is strong and can be improved further, a team of international inspectors has concluded following a two-week mission to review the country's regulatory framework.

Germany's federal radioactive waste company, BGE, has signed an agreement with the country's geoscientific authority, BGR, to cooperate on site selection investigations for a high-level waste repository, as well as on the management of existing waste repositories.

The German cabinet has agreed to grant compensation of up to EUR1 billion (USD1.17 billion) to the utilities forced to shut down their nuclear power plants by the Energiewende, or energy transition, that the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel introduced in response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in Japan in March 2011. At that time, Germany was obtaining around a quarter of its electricity from 17 nuclear reactors operated by EOn, RWE and Vattenfall.

A new process for the chemical decontamination of the reactor cooling system and subsystems in nuclear power plants has been developed by Germany's Siempelkamp NIS Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH. The procedure - which took four years to develop - has been successfully demonstrated in a German nuclear power plant.