A USD600 million settlement reached by the State of South Carolina and the US Administration has brought to an end six years of litigation concerning 9.5 tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium at the Savannah River Site. Under the terms of the settlement, the US Department of Energy is now obligated to remove the material by 2037.

New irradiation experiments on the behaviour of nuclear fuel have recently started in the High Flux Reactor at Petten, in the Netherlands. The Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group says that, by using a new measurement technique, data collected during the experiments could be used to develop new fuels and to optimise the efficiency of existing ones.

The manufacture of the first full reload batch of uranium-plutonium mixed oxide fuel for unit 4 of the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant in Russia has been completed by the Mining and Chemical Combine in Zheleznogorsk, in the Krasnoyarsk region. The 169 fuel assemblies have been accepted by operator Rosenergoatom, and its authorised representative VPO ZAES, which has confirmed the consignment is ready for shipment.

Work has started on installation of the main equipment for the nuclear fuel fabrication facility at the pilot energy complex in Seversk (Tomsk). Under construction at the Siberian Chemical Combine, ODEK is part of Russia’s Proryv (Breakthrough) project, which is designed to demonstrate a closed fuel cycle. SCC is part of fuel company TVEL, which is a subsidiary of state nuclear corporation Rosatom.

Unit 4 of the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant in Russia will be completely switched to uranium-plutonium MOX fuel in 2022, marking an important step towards closing the nuclear fuel cycle, Russia’s Rosatom has announced.

French Orano has signed a contract with Japan's Nuclear Fuel Industries for the fabrication of 32 MOX fuel assemblies for the Takahama 3 and 4 reactors operated by Kansai Electric Power Company. Mixed oxide fuel, or MOX, is nuclear fuel made from reprocessed plutonium and uranium.

Unit 4 of the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant in Russia's Sverdlovsk district has been restarted after being loaded with the first serial batch of mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel. By 2021, the BN-800 fast neutron reactor should be operating with a full core of MOX fuel assemblies.

Siberian Chemical Combine has completed acceptance tests of its ETVS-22, ETVS-23 and ETVS-24 experimental fuel assemblies with mixed uranium-plutonium (nitride) nuclear fuel for fast neutron reactors. Based in Seversk, SCC is a subsidiary of TVEL, the nuclear fuel manufacturing subsidiary of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom.

Siberian Chemical Combine has awarded a RUB26.3 billion (USD412 million) contract to Titan-2 for the construction and installation works for the BREST-OD-300 lead-cooled fast neutron reactor facility at its site in Seversk, Russia. SCC is a subsidiary of TVEL, the nuclear fuel manufacturing subsidiary of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom.

A shipment of samples of plutonium oxide is en route from the UK to a laboratory at Orano's Melox plant in southern France. The samples will be used to determine if the plutonium can be used in the production of mixed-oxide fuel.

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has reached a settlement agreement with MOX Services and its parent companies to resolve all contract closeout matters pertaining to the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility project at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, South Carolina.

TVEL, the nuclear fuel subsidiary of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom, is working on a 'dual-component' approach to closing the nuclear fuel cycle, as well as accident-tolerant fuel and innovations in fuel for VVER units.