EDF has withdrawn its financial targets for 2020 and 2021 as the economic turmoil caused by the coronavirus pandemic impacts key areas of its business. In a statement yesterday, the French state-owned utility said these targets include the lower end of the forecast range for its core earnings in 2020 of EUR17.5 billion (USD19 billion).

The Cigar Lake uranium mine in northern Saskatchewan is to remain in care and maintenance for an "indeterminate period" as the effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic persist, Cameco announced yesterday at the same time as it withdrew its 2020 Outlook. Orano has also extended the suspension of production at its McClean Lake mill, where Cigar Lake ore is processed.

The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency is supporting its members as they adjust to the environment created by the COVID-19 crisis and establishing a means for rapid exchange of ideas and best practices, the Paris-based intergovernmental organisation's director general, William Magwood, said yesterday.

A group of local authorities near the Dukovany nuclear power plant in the Czech Republic said yesterday that plans to expand the facility must go ahead to help offset the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Czech utility ČEZ last month applied to the State Office for Nuclear Safety to construct two new reactors at its Dukovany plant, where four VVER-440 units are currently in operation at the site, which is in Vysočina Region.

The International Atomic Energy Agency says it is accelerating its efforts to support nuclear facility operators through the exchange of knowledge via the International Reporting System for Operating Experience and the newly-established COVID-19 Operational Experience Network.

Canadian uranium producer Cameco says Kazatomprom's decision to temporarily decrease operational activity at their Inkai joint venture is "an unplanned event that may lead to variability" in its 2020 outlook. Cameco has also announced that it is implementing a number of temporary operational changes at its fuel services division facilities in Ontario.

Rosatom plans to resume normal working by the end of this month and sees no need to change the schedule of its new-build projects overseas, Director General Alexey Likhachov said in a video-address to the state nuclear corporation's employees.

Kazatomprom said today that it expects Kazakhstan's 2020 annual uranium production volume to decrease by up to 4,000 tU from previous expectations as the company introduces measures to comply with COVID-19 lockdown requirements. Measures that will result in a lower level of wellfield activity, and thus a reduction in production volume, are expected to remain in place for three months. Kazatomprom is the world's biggest uranium producer, accounting for 23% of global output of the metal in 2018.

The energy sector is uniquely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, but it is also critical to global and national response and recovery efforts, the International Energy Agency said today.

Electricity generation is vital in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but scheduled refuelling and maintenance outages at nuclear power plants around the world must still go ahead. Operators are introducing risk-minimising procedures so outages that have been planned years in advance can proceed, while some are being prompted to rethink or extend scheduled outages.

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and related government responses could disrupt or delay construction, testing, supervisory and support activities at the Vogtle 3 and 4 construction project, but it is too early to say what those effects will be, Southern Company has told the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Russia's Rosatom is looking into the possibility of returning part of the Russian personnel from overseas nuclear power plant construction sites.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is dispatching a first batch of equipment to more than 40 countries to enable them to use a nuclear-derived technique to rapidly detect the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. This emergency assistance is part of the IAEA's response to requests for support from around 90 Member States in controlling an increasing number of infections worldwide.