The US Department of Energy has selected Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, as the site for a new research facility that it says will be a game-changing resource for the international nuclear physics community. The Electron Ion Collider will be designed and constructed over 10 years and cost about USD1.6-2.6 billion.

Germany's phase-out of nuclear power and increased use instead of fossil fuels could have led to 1100 additional deaths each year from air pollution, according to a study by economists at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of California at Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon University.

A ceremony was held on 15 December at the Xiangshan uranium deposit near Fuzhou city in China's Jiangxi province to mark the start of the country's deepest drilling project related to the exploration of uranium resources. China National Nuclear Corporation said a 3000-metre-deep bore hole will be drilled.

Kairos Power, Moltex Canada, Terrestrial Energy Inc and UltraSafe Nuclear Corporation have been selected as the first recipients of support under an initiative launched earlier this year to accelerate the deployment of small modular reactors in Canada, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories has announced.

UK Research and Innovation has provided initial match funding to the consortium of companies designing a new type of nuclear power station in the UK. Rolls-Royce and its partners have said a UK small modular reactor programme could contribute GBP100 billion (USD128 billion) to the UK economy and open up a global export market.

The UK Space Agency and Nuclear Decommissioning Agency have issued a challenge to smaller businesses and university start-ups to research and develop satellite-enabled technologies that could help support the country's nuclear decommissioning efforts.

TVEL, the nuclear fuel manufacturer subsidiary of Russia's Rosatom, has completed the first phase of testing its accident-tolerant fuel in a reactor, at the State Research Institute of Atomic Reactors in Dimitrovgrad.

Two Canadian research organisations have completed the first joint production run of actinium-225 (Ac-225), one of the rarest medical radioisotopes in the world. The high-purity isotope was produced using a high-energy cyclotron at the TRIUMF particle accelerator centre in Vancouver and processed at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories' (CNL) Chalk River laboratories in Ontario.

A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between the US Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to share technical expertise and computing resources to accelerate the deployment of advanced nuclear technologies.

China's first lead-bismuth alloy zero-power reactor - Qixing (Venus) III - achieved first criticality on 9 October, the China Institute of Atomic Energy has announced. The milestone marks the start of China's core physics experiments into liquid metal cooled fast reactors.

Terrestrial Energy and NRG have begun an irradiation programme to analyse the behaviour of graphite under the conditions it will experience during the seven-year life of a Terrestrial Energy Integrated Molten Salt Reactor core unit.

Romanian utility Nuclearelectrica has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Fostering ALFRED Construction consortium regarding cooperation on the development of the Advanced Lead Fast Reactor European Demonstrator (ALFRED). A demonstration unit is planned to be constructed in Romania.