Finland will be carbon-neutral by 2035 under a plan announced by the country's new coalition government. Nuclear power will continue to provide Finland with low-carbon energy under the plan.

Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj is to employ liquid absorbers featuring bitumen in order to eliminate vibrations in the pressuriser surge line of the first-of-a-kind EPR at Olkiluoto. Suppressing the vibrations is one of the issues TVO must resolve before the regulator will allow fuel loading to proceed.

The full-scale in situ system test at the Onkalo underground characterisation facility near Olkiluoto has proceeded to the concreting phase in the construction of the end plug for the deposition tunnel, Finnish waste management company Posiva has announced.

Finnish power companies are looking for ways to streamline licensing and qualification processes through a new project started last year called KELPO. The first part of the project has been completed and it is moving ahead to the pilot phase, writes Tuomo Huttunen, senior advisor on nuclear power at industry group Finnish Energy.

The Finnish government today granted utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj an operating licence for the first-of-a-kind EPR at Olkiluoto. Once it enters commercial operation early next year, the 1600 MWe pressurised water reactor will supply some 15% of the country's electricity demand.

The first eight Westinghouse Triton11 fuel assemblies have been delivered to Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oy's Olkiluoto plant. The new assemblies will be loaded into Olkiluoto 2 during the unit's upcoming outage.

Finland's Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority yesterday informed the government it sees no reason why an operating licence for the first-of-a-kind EPR at Olkiluoto should not be granted to utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj.

Finland's Fennovoima now expects to receive the construction licence for its planned Hanhikivi 1 nuclear power plant in 2021. Start of commercial operation of the Russian-supplied plant has been put back four years to 2028.

Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj has signed a ten-year EUR65 million (USD74 million) loan agreement with the Nordic Investment Bank to finance safety system upgrades at units 1 and 2 of its Olkiluoto nuclear power plant.

Finnish utility Fortum has signed a letter of intent to cooperate with VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in the decommissioning of the Finnish Reactor 1 research reactor and the nuclear power plant structural materials research laboratory.

The start of regular electricity generation at the Olkiluoto 3 EPR has been pushed back by a further four months and is now expected to begin in January 2020, Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj announced today.

Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj has signed a new contract with Global Nuclear Fuel - the value of which has not been disclosed - for the supply of fuel assemblies for its Olkiluoto nuclear power plant.