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.

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.

Uranium enrichment company Urenco yesterday said it expects to commission the Tails Management Facility (TMF) at Capenhurst in the UK in 2018, after construction delays. The facility, to deconvert depleted uranium hexafluoride tails, had previously been expected to enter service this year.

The US International Trade Commission yesterday announced it will conduct an expedited five-year review - also known as a 'sunset' review - on the US-Russia Antidumping Suspension Agreement.

The US Department of Energy has asked for public comment on the effects of potential transfers of its excess uranium inventory on the country's uranium mining, conversion and enrichment industries. The DOE's request was issued the day after the US Government Accountability Office raised issues related to excess uranium transfers over the past decade including questions on the DOE's assessment of market impact studies; the valuation of depleted uranium tails; and the legality of some transfers.

Mid-America Conversion Services - a joint venture of Atkins, Westinghouse and Fluor - has received approval from the US Department of Energy to begin operation of its depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion facilities.

Iran has for the first time injected uranium hexafluoride gas into its IR-8 uranium enrichment centrifuges. The development of the next-generation centrifuges is being carried out within the framework of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran said.

The US Department of Energy has agreed to sell around 300,000 tonnes of depleted uranium hexafluoride to GE Hitachi Global Laser Enrichment for re-enrichment at a proposed plant to be built near DOE's Paducah site in Kentucky. The agreement paves the way for commercialisation of Silex laser enrichment technology.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) yesterday awarded Mid-America Conversion Services, a joint venture of Atkins, Fluor and Westinghouse, a $318 million five-year contract to operate facilities to convert depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) at its plants at Paducah, Kentucky and Portsmouth, Ohio.

The impartiality of the International Atomic Energy Agency was "indispensable" to the high-level political agreement reached last year on Iran's nuclear-related activities, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano told delegates at the Agency's 60th General Conference in Vienna yesterday.

The last of five buildings making up the US Department of Energy's former Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant has been demolished, completing a ten-year program to remove all the former uranium enrichment buildings at the East Tennessee site.

Urenco has today reported a net loss of €8.5 million ($9.6 million) as a result of adverse exchange rate movements and significant weakening of pound sterling in its financial results for the half year ending 30 June 2016. The net loss compares with a net gain in the same period of 2015 of €166 million.