A think tank has urged the British government to spend money earmarked for nuclear R&D on ensuring that at least three advanced reactors including at least one small modular reactor (SMR) and a Generation IV design have completed regulatory assessment by the early 2020s.

Age is no barrier to prolonging the operation of nuclear power plants thanks to technological advances that could not have been predicted by reactor designers working decades ago. That was the conclusion of nuclear industry leaders at a conference hosted recently by EDF Energy and the World Association of Nuclear Operators in London.

The US Nuclear Innovation Alliance has issued a series of recommendations for updating the regulatory process to address an "urgent" need for an advanced reactor licensing process.

Vincent de Rivaz, the CEO of EDF Energy, said today that the Hinkley Point C (HPC) project will "clearly and categorically" go ahead. Giving evidence to the UK parliament's Energy and Climate Change Committee, de Rivaz confirmed that, according to the French economy minister, the repeatedly postponed final investment decision on the project to build two EPR units at the site in Somerset, England would finally be made "by early May". He would not himself give a specific date and said the decision would be made "very soon".

The UK's Office for Nuclear Regulation, the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales have provided an update on their assessment of the two designs currently going through the Generic Design Assessment (GDA) process - Hitachi-GE's UK Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (UK ABWR), and the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor design. The update is provided in the regulators' quarterly report - covering November 2015 to January 2016 - which was issued yesterday.

Hualong International Nuclear Power Technology - the joint venture between China General Nuclear and China National Nuclear Corporation to promote the Hualong One reactor design in export markets - was officially inaugurated today.

A system installed at the training centre of Russia's Novovoronezh nuclear power plant is giving workers a new perspective on the VVER-1200 design. The new 3D holographic display technology could grow to be more widely applied in nuclear power training.

Terrestrial Energy is submitting its Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) design to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) for pre-licensing review, the Canadian company announced today. The submission marks a first step towards an eventual licence application.

Russia is making progress with its plan to build the BREST-OD-300 reactor - part of its 'Proryv', or Breakthrough, project that aims to develop fast reactors with a closed fuel cycle. BREST is the Russian acronym for 'fast reactor with lead coolant'.

NuScale Power's small modular reactor has the capability of using mixed uranium-plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel in addition to conventional light water reactor fuel, a study by the UK's National Nuclear Laboratory has confirmed.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has selected projects to develop a pebble bed reactor and a molten chloride fast reactor to receive multi-year cost-share funding worth up to a total of $80 million.

There has been some program "slippage" in a number of topic areas for the generic design acceptance of the Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactor design, the UK's Office for Nuclear Regulation said in its latest quarterly report on GDAs issued yesterday. Westinghouse is working to "re-baseline the overall program", ONR said, "with the objective of enabling regulators to make decisions" about issuing a Design Acceptance Confirmation and Statement of Design Acceptance Confirmation in January 2017, as per the current schedule.