The Ichos consortium has been selected to design and construct the Pallas research reactor, which is to be built at Petten in the Netherlands to replace the existing High Flux Reactor. The consortium comprises Argentinean nuclear technology firm Invap, together with Croonwolter&dros and Mobilis, both part of TBI Holdings of the Netherlands.

Canadian federal and provincial authorities have completed their technical assessment of Canadian Nuclear Laboratories' draft environmental impact statement for the proposed in-situ decommissioning of Whiteshell Reactor 1.

The US National Nuclear Security Administration  has submitted to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission a preliminary report on a new uranium fuel that will enable the conversion of six US research reactors from highly enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium.

The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute has restarted the 30 MWt High-flux Advanced Neutron Application Reactor (Hanaro), which has been offline for the past three-and-a-half years. During this period, the reactor has undergone safety upgrades.

A test reactor at the US Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory was restarted yesterday after more than 20 years on standby. The Transient Reactor Test Facility, used to test nuclear fuels and materials under extreme conditions, had not operated since being shut down in 1994.

An International Atomic Energy Agency team of nuclear safety experts has today completed a seven-day mission to review safety at the Belgian Research Reactor 2 (BR2). Requested by Belgium's regulatory body, the Federal Agency for Nuclear Control, the mission focused on ageing management and continued safe operation.

Nigeria and Russia have signed agreements on the construction and operation of a nuclear power plant and a nuclear research centre, including a multi-purpose research reactor, in the African country.

Positive actions have resulted in more stable supplies of key medical isotopes in 2017 than predicted three years ago, but vulnerabilities remain, a side event at the International Atomic Energy Agency's 61st General Conference in Vienna heard last week.

Rosatom director-general Alexey Likhachov has explained the Russian state nuclear corporation's "long-range agenda" at the 61st Regular Session of the IAEA General Conference being held this week in Vienna. During the event, Rosatom signed a number of agreements with its international partners.

Irradiation tests on a mixture of lithium and thorium fluoride salts are under way at the High Flux Reactor at Petten in the Netherlands. The results will yield new data on the safe operation of molten salt reactors.

High-enriched uranium has been flown from Ghana back to China in the removal of all such material from the country. The Ghanaian research reactor has been converted to use low-enriched fuel instead.

Ghana's research reactor has achieved full power operation following its conversion to run on low-enriched uranium instead of highly-enriched uranium. It is the first of five such Chinese-supplied reactors outside of China to be converted.