The European Repository Development Organisation was launched yesterday by Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands, with other countries expected to join soon. It aims for member countries to work together to address the common challenges of safely managing long-lived radioactive wastes, including establishing shared multinational geological repositories.

Workers have begun activities to prepare for the demolition of a nuclear reactor at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in California, the Office of Environmental Management at the US Department of Energy announced on 22 December. A team from EM, the National Nuclear Security Administration, and the US Army Corp Engineers performed core drilling, surveying, sampling, and a study of potential demolition impacts last month.

The Czech Cabinet has approved a shortlist of four potential sites for a deep geological repository for used nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive nuclear waste. The government also approved a new schedule calling for the site to be selected by 2030, five years later than originally planned. The repository is expected to be operational by 2065.

Westinghouse will segment the reactor at the Ågesta nuclear power plant near Stockholm, Sweden, under a contract signed with Vattenfall. The country's first commercial power reactor - it operated between 1964 and 1974 - the R3 heavy water reactor supplied electricity and district heating to the Stockholm suburb of Farsta.

Operation of the mixed-oxide fuel fabrication plant under construction in Rokkasho, in Aomori Prefecture, is now expected about two years later than previously planned. Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited had aimed to complete its construction in the first half of fiscal 2022 (ending March 2023), but now expects this in the first half of fiscal 2024.

Industrial services provider Bilfinger has completed the dismantling of the two steam generators at the shutdown Mülheim-Kärlich nuclear power plant in Germany. Bilfinger, which was contracted by plant owner RWE in 2017, dismantled the steam generators in situ. Each of them measured around 23 metres in height, 4 metres in diameter and 450 tonnes in weight.

Holtec International has announced that the second double-walled canister had been loaded with RBMK reactor used nuclear fuel into the Chernobyl nuclear power plant site’s Interim Storage Facility in Ukraine yesterday.

China's first ship for the transport of used nuclear fuel has been delivered to China National Nuclear Corporation. The independently produced double-hulled vessel meets the INF-3 (Irradiated Nuclear Fuel class 3) standards set by the International Maritime Organisation.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the transfer of unit 2 of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant and the corresponding possession-only licence from FirstEnergy Corp subsidiaries GPU Nuclear, Metropolitan Edison Company, Jersey Central Power & Light Company, and Pennsylvania Electric Company to a subsidiary of EnergySolutions known as TMI-2 Solutions. In addition to the NRC approval, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities has approved the sale of TMI-2 to TMI-2 Solutions.

Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Organisation has begun preparations for the drilling of two boreholes in the South Bruce area prior to site selection for a deep geological repository for the country's used nuclear fuel. The first borehole will be drilled in Spring 2021.

The UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has a "perpetual lack of knowledge" about the state and location of waste on its 17 sites, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee says in a report published today. The NDA should set out how it will develop a clearer means of reporting publicly on the level of uncertainty and risk across its sites, and how it will prioritise work on its sites in order to decommission them in the safest and most efficient way, the committee said.