The US Department of Energy and the National Reactor Innovation Center are setting up a Nuclear Energy Launch Pad designed to "promote the rapid development and implementation of advanced nuclear technologies by private industry".
 

Researchers from the University of Liverpool and Copenhagen Atomics say that salt purity is the critical factor in preventing corrosion of stainless steel in molten salt reactors. Meanwhile, irradiation testing of materials for such reactors has begun at the High Flux Reactor in the Netherlands.
 

A 3.7 centimetre-wide robot has been designed to travel along the 27-kilometre Large Hadron Collider to allow remote inspections of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator.
 

Newcleo subsidiary SRS Servizi di Ricerche e Sviluppo has been contracted by Romanian state-owned nuclear R&D coordination organisation RATEN to supply lead-cooled nuclear reactor research facilities.
 

Rosatom says a new austenitic steel has been developed for the primary circuit of the planned lead-cooled BR-1200 reactor where the operating temperature will be 500-600 degrees Celsius.
 

The US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Kairos Power have entered into a USD27 million strategic partnership to accelerate the technology needed to deploy a new generation of advanced nuclear reactors.
 

New Zealand-based fusion energy startup OpenStar Technologies says it has become the first commercial company in the world to successfully create and confine plasma using a levitated dipole reactor.
 

French small modular reactor developer Blue Capsule Technology has announced the start of construction of ELISE - a full-size test rig for sodium at high temperatures - at Peyrolles-en-Provence, in collaboration with France's CSTI Groupe.
 

Finnish small modular reactor developer Steady Energy has poured the first concrete for a full-scale, non-nuclear pilot of its LDR‑50 small modular reactor for district heating at the decommissioned Salmisaari B coal-fired power station in central Helsinki.
 

The Eagles Consortium has signed a collaboration agreement with France-based innovative reactor developer Newcleo to work together on the realisation of the LEANDREA lead-cooled small modular reactor technology demonstrator at Mol in Belgium.
 

Danish nuclear technology company Copenhagen Atomics has completed two years of continuous operation of a molten salt pump and test loop at its facilities in Copenhagen. The system has been running without issues under high-temperature molten salt conditions, marking one of the longest continuous durability tests of its kind worldwide, it said.
 

The US Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy has awarded more than USD19 million to five US companies to research and develop recycling technologies for used nuclear fuel.