VTT Technical Research Centre in Finland has today announced the launch of a project to develop a small modular reactor for district heating. Most of the country's district heating is currently produced by burning coal, natural gas, wood fuels and peat, but it aims to phase out its use of coal in energy production by 2029.

Framatome and General Atomics are to collaborate on the development of accident-tolerant fuel channels fabricated from a silicon carbide composite rather than the current zirconium alloys. Advanced nuclear fuel designs using silicon carbide in the fuel channel, the say, will enhance safety and fuel performance.

The US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Tennessee Valley Authority are to collaborate on the economic feasibility of potentially licensing, building, operating and maintaining one or more advanced nuclear reactors - such as a small modular reactor - at TVA's Clinch River site near Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Idaho National Laboratory is to provide Oklo Inc with access to recovered material from used nuclear fuel to develop and demonstrate the Oklo Aurora - a micro-reactor that can be used in remote or off-grid locations to generate power. Jacob DeWitte, Oklo co-founder and CEO, said the award paves the way for an important demonstration of the first Aurora plant, as well as the "ability of advanced reactors to convert used nuclear fuel, that would otherwise be treated for disposal, into clean energy".

The US Department of Energy on 5 February issued a Request for Information/Notice of Intent to solicit applications for two advanced reactor demonstration awards. It said the issuance of the RFI/NOI was also to give interested parties an opportunity "to provide their insights on how the demonstration programme could be successfully executed".

South African utility Eskom yesterday published a request for an Expression of Interest in reviving all or parts of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor project. It is seeking investors to take stakes in PBMR Ltd, the development and deployment of the reactor design, and in TRISO fuel manufacturing.

Engineers at the UK's University of Sheffield have developed materials that they say could be used to help decommission the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear power plants. In the new research published today, they report their development of small batches of low radioactivity materials that can be used to simulate lava-like fuel containing materials. LFCMs are a mixture of highly radioactive molten nuclear fuel and building materials that fuse together during a nuclear meltdown.

The US Department of Energy has announced a plan to provide USD10 million over three years to advance particle accelerator technology for medical, security, energy, and industrial applications, with a focus on the development of novel "compact" accelerator technologies for cancer treatment and other uses.

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy and TerraPower are to collaborate on pursuing a public private partnership to design and construct the Versatile Test Reactor for the US Department of Energy. Utility Energy Northwest will support the joint GEH-TerraPower effort, with other parties said to be interested in joining.

France's Framatome has been awarded a contract by the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) to support research that will inform the development of new materials to be used in the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider, a major upgrade to the existing Large Hadron Collider.

Global Nuclear Fuel accident-tolerant fuel assemblies have been loaded into a US reactor for the first time. Lead test assemblies using the company's ARMOR-coated zirconium cladding and IronClad accident-tolerant fuel solutions have been installed at Exelon's Clinton boiling water reactor power plant in Illinois.

A nuclear technique has successfully reduced the tsetse fly population in Senegal without harming other insects, an eight-year study has found. The study was supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency, together with the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation. The sterile insect technique (SIT) is an insect birth control method that uses radiation to sterilise male flies.