Holtec International has completed the fabrication and delivery of the Centre Stack Casing for the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory's National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade, a precursor to commercial nuclear power based on nuclear fusion.

The project is a collaboration between Deep Isolation, the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, the University of Sheffield and NAC International and aims to engineer canisters that meet UK regulatory requirements for long-term storage of used fuel and high-level waste in boreholes up to 3 kilometres underground.

Tokamak Energy is to build a prototype compact spherical tokamak, the ST80-HTS, at the UK Atomic Energy Authority's Culham Campus, near Oxford, England. The fusion device - with power plant-relevant magnet technology - will demonstrate multiple technologies required for the delivery of clean, sustainable fusion energy.

Nine South Korean organisations have signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate on the development and demonstration of ships and offshore systems powered with small modular reactors. The partners will also develop marine systems and the production of hydrogen using molten salt reactors.

Materials with better resilience to the extreme conditions in fusion energy power plants are to be developed in a new partnership between the UK Atomic Energy Authority and the University of Birmingham. UKAEA will also sponsor a Chair in Fusion Materials at the University.

Researchers at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission have used muons - cosmic particles - to remotely and non-invasively create a 3D image of the G2 reactor at Marcoule, France, which is undergoing decommissioning.

Tokamak Energy of the UK announced it has built a world-first set of new generation high temperature superconducting magnets to be assembled and tested in fusion power plant-relevant scenarios.

Moltex Energy Limited subsidiary MoltexFLEX has received a research grant to work with researchers at the University of Manchester to investigate how its FLEX reactor's molten coolant salt interacts with graphite, enabling detailed characterisation work to be undertaken.

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation has begun a project at its Lucas Heights facility near Sydney to remove general solid waste, building waste, and some mineral sands used in rare earth metals research, to make way for future site redevelopment.

The memorandum of understanding between Canadian Nuclear Laboratories and the TRIUMF particle accelerator centre aims to foster closer ties between the two nuclear research organisations and leverage their complementary activities as they explore and pursue collaboration opportunities in nuclear and materials science and technology.

A research programme into the safety of fast reactor fuel that has been suspended since the 1990s will resume with tests due to begin at Idaho National Laboratory next month.
 

Researchers have developed a method for assessing degradation of stainless steel components using laser beams that could reduce the time and expense needed for conducting safety checks of ageing nuclear power reactors.