Nuclear Waste Services says that it has selected areas for detailed studies of suitability within each of the three communities involved in the process of selecting a site for the permanent deep burial of nuclear waste material.

The UK government has announced that the country's stockpile of some 140 tonnes of civil plutonium - currently stored at the Sellafield site in Cumbria - will be immobilised and eventually disposed of in a geological disposal facility. The inventory arose from the reprocessing of used fuel undertaken over many decades.

Blasting work 45 metres below ground has begun, marking the start of the expansion of Sweden's existing SFR final repository for low and intermediate-level waste at Forsmark. The extension - expected to take six years to complete - will triple the capacity of the repository.

A project to develop the case for scaling-up the harvesting of lead-212 from reprocessed uranium for use in treating cancer has been selected for funding by UK Research and Innovation.

Ground work has begun for the construction of a final repository for used nuclear fuel in Forsmark, in Östhammar municipality, radioactive waste management company Svensk Kärnbränslehantering AB announced.

The State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine has given approval for the commissioning of the Solid Waste Retrieval Facility and Solid Waste Processing Plant at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant site.

Egypt's Nuclear Power Plants Authority has been given the go ahead by the Nuclear and Radiological Regulatory Authority to establish a storage facility for used nuclear fuel at the El Dabaa nuclear power plant site.

Work to segment and package the steel reactor pressure vessel head of the Brunsbüttel nuclear power plant in Germany has been completed in less than two months, Vattenfall announced. The metal will now be recycled.

A groundbreaking ceremony has been held to mark the long-delayed start of construction of an outdoor dry storage facility for used nuclear fuel at Taiwan's shut down Kuosheng nuclear power plant.