Shikoku Electric Power Company has submitted an amended 'construction plan' to the Japanese regulator for strengthening unit 3 of its Ikata nuclear power plant in Ehime prefecture. The plan is the second of three applications required during the restart process.

French utility EDF will need to spend some €100 billion ($113 billion) on upgrading its fleet of 58 nuclear power reactors by 2030, the country's state audit office has said. The upgrades are needed to meet new safety requirements and to extend the lives of the units beyond 40 years.

Russian and Bulgarian companies have signed a contract to extend the operating life of unit 6 of the Kozloduy nuclear power plant to 60 years. The agreement - between Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant plc and a consortium of Russia's Rusatom Services and Bulgaria's Risk Engineering Ltd - was signed during a meeting of the Bulgarian-Russian intergovernmental commission on economic and scientific-technical cooperation in Sofia yesterday, by Evgeny Sal'kov, general director of Rusatom Services, and Dimitar Angelov, executive director of Kozloduy NPP plc.

Shikoku Electric Power Company has applied to the Japanese regulator to construct a back-up emergency response building at unit 3 of its Ikata nuclear power plant in Ehime prefecture.

The government of the Canadian province of Ontario has announced that a CAD 12.8 billion ($9 billion) project to refurbish the four Candu units at Ontario Power Generation's (OPG) Darlington nuclear power station will start in October. The province has also approved the continued operation of OPG's Pickering plant to 2024.

Although units 1 and 2 of the Sendai nuclear power plant in Japan's Kagoshima prefecture have passed new safety standards and are the only reactors in the country so far to have restarted, operator Kyushu Electric Power Company has applied to the regulator to make additional modifications to increase safety further.

The Swiss nuclear safety regulator has reaffirmed the measures that must be taken by utility BKW in order for its Mühleberg nuclear power plant to continue operating until 2019.

Bruce Power and the Independent Electricity System Operator have entered into an amended, long-term agreement to secure 6300 MWe from the Bruce Power site, through a multi-year investment program. In a statement today, Ontario-based Bruce Power said the amended agreement - which will take economic effect on 1 January - will allow it to immediately invest in life-extension activities for units 3-8 to support a long-term refurbishment program that will commence on unit 6 in 2020.

A $3 million upgrade of the Michigan Ion Beam Laboratory will enable tests on radiation damage in materials to be performed much quicker than previously possible. Such tests will help in the life extension of existing reactors and in the development of advanced reactor designs.

Energoatom has postponed the completion target date for its program to improve the safety of its nuclear power plants from 2017 to the end of 2020.

A claim for $7.6 billion has been made against Japan's Mitsubishi for damages resulting from the early closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in California.

The restart of unit 1 of Switzerland's Beznau nuclear power plant, currently offline for an annual overhaul, has been postponed while flaw indications detected in its reactor pressure vessel (RPV) are investigated further. A maintenance outage at unit 2 has been brought forward so that its RPV can also be checked.