PreussenElektra has awarded a major decommissioning contract to ZerKon, a consortium of GNS Gesellschaft für Nuklear-Service, Westinghouse Electric Germany and Westinghouse Electric Sweden. The contract covers the dismantling and packaging of reactor pressure vessel internals in six nuclear power plants that are scheduled for dismantling.

An internal investigation of the primary containment vessel of unit 2 at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan was completed as scheduled today, Tokyo Electric Power Company has announced. The survey - using a suspended pan-tilt camera attached to a telescopic guiding pipe - identified deposits and fuel assembly components at the bottom of the pedestal area.

The Californian Public Utilities Commission yesterday approved Pacific Gas & Electric's request to retire the state's only operating nuclear capacity - the two-unit Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant - by 2025.

A newly installed melter at the Defense Waste Processing Facility at the US Department of Energy's Savannah River site has poured its first canisters of vitrified radioactive waste.

Canadian federal and provincial authorities have completed their technical assessment of Canadian Nuclear Laboratories' draft environmental impact statement for the proposed in-situ decommissioning of Whiteshell Reactor 1.

The Gundremmingen B boiling water reactor in southern Germany was disconnected from the grid on 31 December after 33 years of operation. The government had ordered the plant to close by the end of last year as part of the country's energy transition.

A suspended pan-tilt camera attached to a telescopic guiding pipe will soon be used to investigate the interior of the primary containment vessel of the damaged unit 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan. The device was developed by Toshiba Energy Systems & Solutions and the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning.

Kansai Electric Power Company has today announced that it will not seek permission to restart units 1 and 2 of its Ohi nuclear power plant in Japan's Fukui Prefecture. The company will now apply to decommission the two 1175 MWe pressurised water reactors, which are approaching 40 years old.

The Centre for Advanced Robotics at the Queen Mary University of London was recently awarded a GBP1.0 million ($1.3 million) grant to help establish a centre of excellence for nuclear robotics in the UK. The focus of the centre will be to develop technology for aiding radioactive waste management.

Magnox Ltd has emptied more than half of the used fuel from the Wylfa reactors on Anglesey, in Wales, the UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said today. When operating, Wylfa's two reactors together contained nearly 100,000 fuel elements.

An international team led by the University of Sheffield has discovered that the toxic element arsenic prevents uranium from an abandoned mine in the UK migrating into rivers and groundwater. The discovery could help in the remediation of former uranium mines and other radioactively contaminated areas around the world, the scientists believe.

Nuclear power accounted for a fifth of total electricity produced in the UK last year and it remains the largest single source of low carbon electricity in the UK, providing 46% of the low carbon electricity produced, with wind, solar, hydro and biomass providing the remainder, according to the Nuclear Industry Association's first Activity Report, issued today. With two-thirds of all dispatchable power capacity retiring between 2010 and 2030, including all but one of the country's existing nuclear stations, the NIA warns that this will need to be replaced with a new fleet to continue providing the reliable, secure low carbon power the UK will need.