If existing inventories of used nuclear fuel were recycled and repurposed as fuel for advanced fast reactors, it could generate zero-carbon electricity for Europe for up to 1000 years, according to international environmental campaign group RePlanet.

Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited has announced that it now expects the reprocessing plant under construction at Rokkasho in Japan's Aomori Prefecture to begin commercial operation in 2024 instead of 2022, as had been previously scheduled.

The US Department of Energy has selected twelve projects looking to advance recycling of used nuclear fuel - or UNF - from commercial power reactors to receive USD38 million of funding. The projects, led by universities, private companies and national laboratories, will work towards reducing the impacts of used fuel disposal, DOE said.

Just before midnight on 17 July, the final used fuel was fed into Sellafield's Magnox Reprocessing Plant's charge machine and dissolved in nitric acid to separate out the plutonium and uranium. It is a process which has been used to reprocess nearly 55,000 tonnes of Magnox fuel since 1964.

A Memorandum of Understanding signed by Energy Northwest and Curio sees Energy Northwest as an industry partner and potential off-taker of products produced through Curio's NuCycle nuclear waste recycling process.

Orano has been awarded a contract by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency for the transport and treatment in France of 731 used fuel assemblies from the Fugen experimental Advanced Thermal Reactor in Japan. In 2018, Orano was contracted to conduct preparatory work for the transport operations.

The Magnox reprocessing plant at the Sellafield site in Cumbria has reprocessed the final box of used fuel from the UK's fast reactor programme being stored in the plant's ponds. Meanwhile, preparations are being made for the demolition of the iconic Pile One chimney that dominated the landscape over Sellafield for decades.

The Magnox reprocessing plant at Sellafield will end its operations in July, marking the completion of the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority's Magnox Operating Programme.

A new method to remove and process used fuel at the Savannah River site in South Carolina that will save more than 20 years of work and billions of dollars in costs has been approved by the US Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management.

The US Department of Energy has announced funding of up to USD48 million for a new programme to recycle used nuclear fuel to produce feedstocks for advanced reactor fuel. Converting UNF Radioisotopes Into Energy will be run under the auspices of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.

California-based Oklo Inc and Argonne National Laboratory have signed an agreement formalising their commitment to commercialising recycling technology for advanced reactor fuel as part of a US Department of Energy-funded project.

A contract has been signed to design the used fuel reprocessing module of the Pilot Demonstration Energy Complex facility under construction at Seversk in Russia.