Russian power engineering R&D institute NIKIET has completed the engineering design for the BREST-300 lead-cooled fast reactor.

Japan's Hitachi has begun further joint research with three US universities into the development of reactors that could use transuranic (TRU) elements as fuel. This could result in a significant decrease in the time needed for the decay in the radioactivity of used fuel.

South Korean designers have secured help from Argonne National Laboratory to develop an advanced reactor, which is partly based on America's successful EBR-II prototype. A 150 MWe sodium-cooled demonstration unit is slated for 2028.

A new centre for developing technologies for remote handling in extreme conditions has opened at the Culham Science Centre in the UK. A £15.6 million ($26.2 million) purpose-built facility is to be constructed at the site by 2016.

Operations have ended at a post-irradiation examination facility at the UK's Harwell nuclear research site. Decommissioning activities will begin in about three years.

A demonstration high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) could be constructed in Indonesia following the signing of a cooperation agreement between Japan and Indonesia on developing such reactors.

A new remote-handled low-level waste disposal facility should be in operation at the Idaho National Laboratory by October 2017. A $34 million contract for the facility's design and construction has now been awarded.

Work by the UK's National Nuclear Laboratory to recover americium-241 from the UK's ageing civil plutonium stockpile under a contract with the European Space Agency raises some interesting issues, writes Ian Hore-Lacy.

South Africa has confirmed its commitment to nuclear power, allocating ZAR850 million ($81 million) – over 10% of its energy ministry's budget – to research and development.

Spanish utility Iberdrola will work with GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy to develop a proposal to build a Prism integral fast reactor in the UK, but is yet to decide the scope of its involvement either as an engineer or operator of the potential plant.

Man has been sifting through trash for millennia, but the extraction of americium-241 waste from the UK's stockpile of civilian plutonium takes the exercise to a whole new dimension. Am-241 - a decay product of plutonium-241 - is the most prevalent isotope of americium in long-term stored plutonium and is currently considered to be waste.

The Indian government has announced an increase of almost 27% in its budget for atomic research and nuclear power for the latest fiscal year. Investment in nuclear-related public enterprises has also significantly increased.