Japan's Toshiba announced today that it has completed the sale to Brookfield of its shareholding in Toshiba Nuclear Energy Holdings (US) Inc - the indirect holding company of Westinghouse Electric Company. The sale is independent of Brookfield's acquisition of Westinghouse and some of its affiliates.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has renewed its contract with Southwest Research Institute to operate the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses. The five-year contract is valued at up to USD52 million.

The same construction milestone - installation of the reactor pressure vessel - has been reached at unit 4 of the Vogtle nuclear power plant in the US state of Georgia and at unit 5 of the Hongyanhe plant in China's Liaoning province.

Terrestrial Energy USA and Energy Northwest have agreed a memorandum of understanding on the terms of the possible siting, construction and operation of an Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) at a site at the Idaho National Laboratory in southeastern Idaho.

FirstEnergy Solutions has notified regional transmission organisation PJM Interconnection that it will deactivate the Beaver Valley, Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear power plants during the next three years. The company, which is aiming to leave the competitive market, is seeking legislative policy solutions to keep the plants operating.

Westinghouse Electric Company's reorganisation plan - including its sale to Brookfield - has been approved by the US Bankruptcy Court. Westinghouse said the court's approval of the plan is a "significant milestone in the company's strategic restructuring".

An international multi-laboratory and university collaboration has been launched to develop detection hardware and algorithms to improve non-proliferation detector capabilities for remote monitoring of nuclear reactors. Its developers say the initial project will be the first demonstration of remote monitoring of individual reactor operations at a significant distance, using scalable water-based technology.

UPDATED Both houses of the US Congress have approved an omnibus appropriations bill including USD1.2 billion for nuclear energy. The bill will see the suspension of sales by the Department of Energy of surplus uranium to pay for decommissioning work at the former Portsmouth uranium enrichment plant.

Unmanned aerial system technology is being developed to fly into the containment vessels of the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan to assess their condition. Tokyo Electric Power Company contracted the Southwest Research Institute of the USA to carry out the work.

A pair of autonomous robots, developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute to characterise uranium deposits in process pipes, could save tens of millions of dollars in decommissioning costs at the USA's former gaseous diffusion enrichment plants.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is transforming the way it carries out its business as it adapts to meet new challenges, the agency's annual conference heard last week. The country's nuclear industry is mirroring the regulator's efforts with its own initiative to press for regulatory change.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a confirmatory order to Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc and Entergy Operations, Inc, documenting actions they have agreed to take to implement programmes designed to prevent wilful misconduct at their fleet of seven operating nuclear power plants.