Final system-wide trials began yesterday of the new dry interim used fuel storage facility at the site of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. The facility is expected to be handed over to the state-owned enterprise Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the coming months.

EnergySolutions is to decommission the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant in Nebraska - which was permanently shut down in October 2016 - under a contract signed yesterday with owner Omaha Public Power District.

The board of directors of Norway's Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) yesterday decided to permanently cease operations of the JEEP-II research reactor at Kjeller. Earlier this year, IFE said investigations had shown "extensive and costly improvements" were needed to keep JEEP-II - Norway's last reactor - in operation.

Dounreay Site Restoration Limited has awarded six framework contracts - potentially worth up to a combined GBP400 million (USD 518 million) - for decommissioning services at the Dounreay site in Scotland.

Entergy Corp has agreed to sell the Indian Point Energy Center to a subsidiary of Holtec International following the shut-down of the final reactor at the site, which is planned for 2021. Holtec-SNC Lavalin joint venture Comprehensive Decommissioning Inc will decommission the plant on an accelerated timescale.

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe visited the Fukushima Daiichi site today as the process to remove used fuel from unit 3 officially began. It has taken several years for Tepco to remove debris from the reactor building service floor and prepare for this work to reduce the hazard at the accident site.

Orano TN's NUHOMS dry storage systems will be allowed to store used nuclear fuel with significantly shorter cooling times and higher decay heat under licensing amendments approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Exelon Generation has filed its detailed plan for decommissioning unit 1 at Three Mile Island in Pennsyvlania, but says the plant will remain in operation if the state enacts a policy solution to preserve nuclear capacity.

Cavendish Nuclear has completed the handover of the Silos Maintenance Facility at the UK's Sellafield site. The plant will support the retrieval of waste from the site's legacy silos.

Bulgaria's State Enterprise Radioactive Waste has awarded a further three-year extension to the Decommissioning-Repository Project Management Unit Consultant contract to the Empresarios Agrupados/Nuvia Consortium. The contract will now run through to 2022.

Installation has been completed of the equipment needed to remove material from the Pile Fuel Cladding Silo at the Sellafield site in the UK. Demonstration removal of waste is scheduled for later this year, with larger scale removal operations set to start in 2020.

With the anticipated increase in decommissioning-related activities over the coming decades, significant challenges lie ahead. By viewing nuclear back-end management through a sustainability lens, a set of principles that offer tremendous benefits for a wide range of stakeholders emerges, writes Kristina Gillin, a principal consultant in nuclear waste and decommissioning at Lloyd's Register.