Tularosa Basin Range Services has been awarded a contract worth up to about USD3 billion by the US Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management to manage and operate the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant transuranic waste disposal site in New Mexico. The contract replaces that held by Nuclear Waste Partnership, which expires at the end of September.

The first container holding used fuel from the Garoña nuclear power plant in Spain has been placed in the on-site interim dry storage facility. Removal of all the used fuel from the plant's storage pool must be completed before decommissioning work begins.

A Community Partnership has formed in Theddlethorpe, Lincolnshire, in eastern England, to consider whether the UK's Geological Disposal Facility could be safely located and built deep underground beyond the coastline there. It is the fourth such partnership in the UK, following three that were established in west Cumbria in north-west England over the last year.

The excavation of the first five actual disposal tunnels has been completed at the Onkalo underground used nuclear fuel repository near Olkiluoto, Finnish radioactive waste management company Posiva Oy announced.

Sweden's Land and Environment Court has granted radioactive waste management company Svensk Kärnbränslehantering AB an environmental permit to increase the amount of used nuclear fuel in the Clab interim storage facility at Oskarshamn from 8000 tonnes to 11,000 tonnes.

Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Organization is confident in the suitability of both potential sites under consideration to host a deep geological repository to store the nation's used nuclear fuel.
 

The first batch of waste has been removed from the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo at the Sellafield site in the UK. The facility was built in the 1960s to store waste from the UK's earliest nuclear reactors in water-filled chambers.

Skanska Talonrakennus Oy, the contractor responsible for construction of the used fuel encapsulation plant at Olkiluoto, handed over the building to Finnish waste management company Posiva at the end of May for installation of the nuclear systems.

After more than eight years of preparation, Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Organization has completed a full-scale demonstration of the engineered barriers that will safely contain and isolate the country's used nuclear fuel in a deep geological repository.

Slovenia has a "comprehensive, robust and well-functioning system" for used nuclear fuel and radioactive waste management, a team of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency has concluded. However, it noted areas where it could be further enhanced.

Construction of unit 4 at the Xudapu nuclear power plant in China's Liaoning province has officially got under way with the pouring of first concrete for the reactor's nuclear island. The unit is the second of two VVER-1200 reactors at the site to be supplied by Russia.

Finland's Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority has started reviewing Posiva Oy's operating licence application for the world's first used fuel disposal facility after concluding the company has provided sufficient material.