Lead test assemblies of EnCore accident tolerant fuel have been installed in Engie Electrabel's Doel unit 4 in Belgium, Westinghouse Electric Company and ENUSA Industrias Avanzadas have announced. Doel 4 is the second commercial nuclear power plant in the world, and the first in Europe, into which EnCore assemblies have been installed.

The Russian government, Rosatom and Rostec have signed a statement of intent for the development of end-to-end digital technology. In a separate digital technology development, Rosatom has announced the creation of a digital configuration management system for the Hanhikivi-1 nuclear power plant project in Finland.

New modular-based experiment holders developed by the US Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory are expected to improve transient testing on nuclear fuels and materials, and enable new clients like NASA to take advantage of the unique capabilities at INL's Transient Reactor Test Facility.

Rosatom has approved a project to upgrade an experimental shop-floor for nuclear fuel fabrication at the site of the Siberian Chemical Combine, which is in Seversk, in the Tomsk region of Russia. The move will enable SCC to manufacture fuel assemblies with uranium-plutonium REMIX (regenerated mixture) fuel matrix for VVER-1000 reactors.

Bruce Power and Cameco yesterday announced the launch of a centre for next generation nuclear technologies as one of a series of initiatives to leverage their existing partnership to help rebuild the Canadian economy post-COVID, protect the environment and fight disease. They also announced that Cameco will supply an additional 1600 specialised fuel bundles for the 2024 restart of Bruce unit 6, which is currently undergoing refurbishment.

Jacobs and IS Instruments have designed a new type of Raman spectroscopy technology to detect radioactive contamination or other hazardous substances in waste stores and nuclear facilities undergoing decommissioning.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover successfully launched today from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The rover, which will be powered by a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator developed at the US Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory, will land on Mars to begin exploration in February 2021.

The UK has launched a GBP3.9 million (USD5.0 million) competition to find innovative ways to sort and segregate radioactive waste at some of its oldest nuclear sites. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority - including Sellafield Ltd and Magnox Ltd - has teamed up with Innovate UK to call on companies to "come up with new ideas and innovative approaches to the challenge".

Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC, the managing and operating contractor for the US Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory, has issued a request for information on a fission surface power system that can be operated on the Moon.

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.

Deep Isolation has signed a long-term cooperation and licensing agreement with NAC International to design, manufacture and supply canisters to store and/or dispose of nuclear waste in deep horizontal boreholes. The agreement follows a short-term memorandum of understanding the two companies signed last year.

The International Atomic Energy Agency and the Generation IV International Forum have called for greater efforts to support the early deployment of innovative nuclear reactor systems to address climate change. The appeal came during the 14th GIF-IAEA Interface Meeting held last week.