UPDATED German power company EnBW has received permits for the construction of decommissioning infrastructure at its Neckarwestheim and Philippsburg nuclear power plants. The company plans to start building soon residual material treatment centres and interim site-waste storage facilities at the two sites.

Vattenfall has developed special gripping tools with which to remove more than 600 barrels of low- and intermediate-level waste from six storage pits at the decommissioned Brunsbüttel nuclear power plant in Germany.

Ahead of the start of construction later this year of a full-scale Synroc waste treatment plant, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (Ansto) is preparing to upscale the technology from a research level to an industrial scale in a pilot plant.

The Finnish regulator has given utility Fortum permission to start full operation of the liquid radioactive waste solidification facility at its Loviisa nuclear power plant. Commissioning of the waste facility began in 2006.

Scientists using the UK's synchrotron science facility - Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire, England - have presented their research into radioactive waste containment at the world's largest science conference - the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, held on 11-15 February in Washington DC. In a statement yesterday, Diamond Light Source Ltd said this work may help to inform the UK's policy on radioactive waste disposal.

Demolition work has begun on building K-27, the last of five gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment facilities at the former Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The US Department of Energy plans to remove all gaseous diffusion buildings from the site by the end of the year under its Vision 2016 project.

Plans for the decommissioning of three nuclear power units in Japan's Fukui Prefecture have been submitted to the country's nuclear regulator for approval. Mihama units 1 and 2 and unit 1 of the Tsuruga plant were among five reactors officially taken out of service last April.

The Japanese cabinet has approved a bill aimed at "taking measures necessary for the steady implementation of the reprocessing of used nuclear fuel". The bill creates a new entity responsible for reprocessing and introduces a new system for funding it.

Two Swiss expert groups have today released reports supporting the repository siting proposals put forward by the country's national radioactive waste disposal cooperative Nagra. However, they call for further investigations to be carried out in the Nördlich Lägern region.

Japan's nuclear regulator has given the go-ahead to Chubu Electric Power Company to start removing "peripheral" equipment from units 1 and 2 of its Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka prefecture. Both units were permanently shut down in January 2009.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has invited public comment by 15 June on a consent-based approach to siting facilities for the storage and disposal of used commercial nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.

Cold testing - one of the first stages of the commissioning process - has started at the new Interim Spent Fuel Storage Facility for units 1 and 2 of the shut-down Ignalina nuclear power plant in Lithuania. In a separate statement, the state enterprise responsible for decommissioning the plant said over 30,000 tonnes of nuclear-related equipment had been dismantled since the process started in 2010.