The UK will build a high-temperature gas reactor as the centrepiece of its Advanced Modular Reactor Research, Development & Demonstration Programme, energy minister Greg Hands has confirmed. "I'm pleased to announce that we will focus on HTGRs as the technology choice for the programme moving forward," he told the Nuclear2021 conference organised in London by the Nuclear Industry Association yesterday. His statement served as a confirmation of the technology, which had emerged as the UK government's preference after a round of consultations earlier this year.

Ontario Power Generation has selected the BWRX-300 small modular reactor for the Darlington new nuclear site, and will work with GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy to deploy the reactor. Canada's first commercial, grid-scale, SMR could be completed as early as 2028.

A year-long, CAD8.4 million (USD6.6 million) contract will see Canada's Candu Energy prepare the licensing basis for two new Candu pressurised heavy water reactors at Romania's Cernavoda nuclear power plant. The signing was celebrated by the governments of Romania and Canada, as well as the USA.

The US Department of Energy has awarded funding to the Nuclear Alternative Project to study the potential siting of small reactors in Puerto Rico. Funding also goes to address hurdles to the use of small reactors in commercial shipping and to support the development of advanced reactor designs. 

All four of Rooppur 1's steam generators have been lifted into position, Russia's Rosatom has announced. Separately, Rosatom's export subsidiary Atomstroyexport is working with the Bangladesh Ministry of Health on a vaccination programme to protect workers at Rooppur from COVID-19. Bangladesh's first nuclear power reactor is slated to start up in 2023.

A consortium including Italy's Ansaldo Nucleare and Romania's Reinvent Energy has been awarded a contract worth about EUR20.0 million (USD22.5 million) for the design, procurement, installation and commissioning of a research facility for the development of lead-cooled reactors. The Advanced Thermo-Hydraulics Experiment for Nuclear Application facility will be built at the RATEN-ICN research centre near Pitesti in southern Romania.

Russian manufacturers are dispatching several components to Turkey's first nuclear power plant, Akkuyu, which is currently the largest nuclear construction site in the world with 13,000 people working on a daily basis on the site that will house four large reactors.

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration is seeking proposals from nuclear and space industry leaders to develop innovative technologies for a fission surface power system for lunar power applications. It hopes to deploy such a system by 2030.

A contract signed by the Ukrainian nuclear operator Energoatom and US vendor Westinghouse will trigger the engineering and procurement of components for the first of several AP1000s planned for Ukraine. The country is planning as much as 11 GWe of new build by 2040.

Southern Company and the US Department of Energy have signed an agreement to design, construct and operate the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment - a proof-of-concept critical fast-spectrum salt reactor. Southern will lead a collaborative effort to build the MCRE - which it says will be the world's first fast-spectrum salt reactor to achieve criticality - at Idaho National Laboratory.

NuScale Power, Prodigy Clean Energy and Kinectrics have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to explore and inform the development of a regulatory framework to address licensing and deployment of a Prodigy Marine Power Station. The MPS would integrate up to 12 NuScale Power Modules into a marine-based nuclear power plant system.

Russia's newest nuclear-powered icebreaker, the Sibir, has left the Baltic Shipyard and headed into the Gulf of Finland for sea trials. Two more identical ships are under construction at the shipyard near Saint Petersburg.