TVEL, Rosatom's nuclear fuel manufacturing subsidiary, has signed an agreement with Fortum Power and Heat Oy to supply modified nuclear fuel assemblies to be used at the Loviisa 1 and  2 VVER 440s in Finland. Rosatom said yesterday the agreement is in addition to TVEL's existing fuel supply contract with the Finnish utility.

China has completed a "large-scale demonstration project for a new generation of uranium enrichment centrifuges", China National Nuclear Corporation announced yesterday. The new centrifuges have now been put into production at the Hanzhun fuel facility in Shaanxi province.

Electricity prices in Ukraine are too low to enable the country's nuclear power plant operator to cover the cost of its fuel, its president and CEO said last week. In addition, the regulator's new methodology for calculating the cost of nuclear fuel purchases is restricted to new contracts.

Orano USA and Waste Control Specialists plan to form a joint venture to license a consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) for used nuclear fuel at the WCS site in Andrews County, Texas. The joint venture will request that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission resume its review of the CISF licence application WCS originally submitted two years ago.

Terrestrial Energy of Canada has signed a contract for technical services with the European Commission's Joint Research Centre in Karlsruhe, Germany. Under the contract, JRC will perform confirmatory studies of the fuel and primary coolant salt mixture for Terrestrial's Integrated Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR).

A consortium led by Westinghouse Electric Company has completed an EU-funded project aimed at diversifying the supply of fuel to Russian-built VVER-440 reactors in Europe.

Unit 1 of the Edwin I Hatch nuclear power plant in the US state of Georgia has begun operating with test accident-tolerant fuel assemblies. The fuel, loaded during a recent outage, is the first of its kind to be installed in a commercial nuclear reactor.

Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in Lithuania has announced the removal of the last used fuel assembly from the reactor of unit 2. Some of the used fuel was removed from the reactor after its final closure in 2009, but the remainder was left pending the launch of an Interim Spent Fuel Storage Facility.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited (JNFL) have both completed their investment of some EUR250 million (USD307 million) to acquire 5% stakes in Orano, the former Areva nuclear fuel cycle activities.

A cover has been installed over the fuel handling machine that will help remove fuel from the storage pool of unit 3 of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. The removal of the fuel is scheduled to start in mid-2018.

The US Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration has extended its supply of low-enriched uranium for national security needs for at least the next two decades but should clarify its longer term enrichment needs, the US Government Accountability Office has found.

Kyushu Electric Power Company today began loading fuel into the core of unit 3 at its Genkai nuclear power plant in Japan's Saga prefecture. The reactor, together with unit 4, is expected to be restarted later this year.