Hitachi-GE's UK Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (UK ABWR) is suitable for construction in the UK, regulators have concluded following an in-depth Generic Design Assessment. The regulators said they were satisfied the reactor "meets regulatory expectations on safety, security and environmental protection at this stage of the regulatory process".

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.

Ontario Power Generation and over 30 partner organisations have completed Exercise Unified Control, a two-day, large-scale emergency preparedness exercise at the Pickering nuclear power plant. The exercise is part of the lead-up to the relicensing of the plant in 2018.

EDF has received permission from France's Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire to restart three reactors at the Tricastin power plant after carrying out repairs to a canal embankment. The regulator ordered the temporary shutdown of Tricastin's reactors on 27 September because of the risks of failure of a 400 metre long portion of the embankment of the Donzére-Mondragon canalin the event of an earthquake. 

The operator of the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant in Russia has demonstrated a commitment to safety and is taking many improvement initiatives, an Operational Safety Review Team team from the International Atomic Energy Agency has concluded.

The governor of Japan's Fukui Prefecture has today approved the restart of units 3 and 4 of Kansai Electric Power Company's Ohi nuclear power plant. The utility reportedly plans to restart both units by mid-March.

Harmonising the training of contractors to access multiple nuclear facilities in the USA is one example of ensuring safety amid pressures on the industry to cut costs and remain competitive, Peter Prozesky, CEO of the World Association of Nuclear Operators, told World Nuclear News in a recent interview. This approach is one answer to the industry's need to align its procedures, as outlined in World Nuclear Association’s Harmony initiative, he added.

A small number of fuel rods supplied to reactors in France and Switzerland have been affected by quality control issues. EDF Group said today that Areva had notified it of quality control deviations on certain rods, which meant the supplier was unable to demonstrate that quality control to substantiate that the leak tightness of those rods had been properly performed.

The UK's Office for Nuclear Regulation and the Environment Agency announced today they are progressing to the next phase of their Generic Design Assessment of the UK HPR1000 reactor. This is the Hualong One design that General Nuclear Services - a subsidiary of EDF and China General Nuclear - proposes to use at a prospective new nuclear power plant in England.

Dutch utility EPZ has addressed all the recommendations and all but one of the suggestions that an International Atomic Energy Agency mission to the Borssele nuclear power plant made in 2014, a follow-up Operational Safety Review Team mission has concluded.

A test reactor at the US Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory was restarted yesterday after more than 20 years on standby. The Transient Reactor Test Facility, used to test nuclear fuels and materials under extreme conditions, had not operated since being shut down in 1994.

An International Atomic Energy Agency team of nuclear safety experts has today completed a seven-day mission to review safety at the Belgian Research Reactor 2 (BR2). Requested by Belgium's regulatory body, the Federal Agency for Nuclear Control, the mission focused on ageing management and continued safe operation.