Rosatom and its subsidiaries yesterday signed agreements with a number of governments, companies and universities during the IX AtomExpo International Forum it is hosting this week in Moscow.

Unit 1 of the Oskarshamn nuclear power plant in Sweden has been permanently shut down. A decision not to restart the unit after an operational issue resulted in it closing ten days ahead of schedule.

A consortium of Turkish companies yesterday signed an agreement with Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom on the main conditions for acquiring a 49% stake in JSC Akkuyu Nuclear, the company that will build and operate Turkey's first nuclear power plant.

Rosatom plans to carry out work to extend the operating period of unit 2 of the Metsamor nuclear power plant in Armenia in 2018 and 2019, the Russian state nuclear corporation said on 13 June, following a meeting between its director-general, Alexey Likhachov, and Armenian Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan.

The OECD-Nuclear Energy Agency and the US-based Electric Power Research Institute have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to exchange global nuclear research experience. The MOU outlines the scope and objectives of a five-year agreement to establish dialogue between them. Representatives of each organisation will now be invited to participate in each other's committee meetings and they may also organise joint events, seminars, workshops and training activities.

Hitachi has stressed the importance to its UK nuclear business of a "one team" project management structure based on collaboration between three companies. Hitachi, which acquired Horizon Nuclear Power in 2012 as a wholly owned subsidiary, is partnering with US and Japanese engineering firms Bechtel and JGC.

The most Toshiba may have to pay the owners of the Vogtle nuclear power plant construction project is $3.68 billion under an agreement signed on 9 June. Georgia Power has also finalised a new service agreement with Westinghouse allowing for the transition of project management. 

The permanent shutdown of unit 1 of the Kori nuclear power plant has been approved by the South Korea's nuclear safety regulator. The unit - the country's oldest operating reactor unit - will be taken offline on 19 June.

Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power and the UAE's Nawah Energy Company have agreed to cooperate in the sharing of experience in the operation of Korean-designed APR1400 nuclear power reactors. South Korea's first APR1400 unit entered commercial operation in December 2015, while four such reactors are due to start up in the UAE by 2020.

Unit 3 of the Takahama nuclear power plant in Japan's Fukui prefecture was restarted today, plant owner Kansai Electric Power Company has announced. Takahama 4 - which had also been kept offline since March 2016 by a court injunction - was restarted last month, joining three other reactors in operation.

Investment of $310 million in recently completed refuelling and maintenance outages at Exelon's nuclear power plants in upstate New York would not have been possible without the state's clean energy legislation, Exelon said yesterday. Meanwhile, 13 US states have joined a coalition committed to upholding the Paris climate change agreement.

Jordanian researchers will have access to the research reactors and ancillary facilities of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission following the recent signing of a partnership agreement with the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission.