The UK's Office for Nuclear Regulation has the expertise and resources it needs should it receive a request from government to assess China's Hualong One reactor design, its chief nuclear inspector, Richard Savage, said today. ONR's chief executive, Adriènne Kelbie, added that she sees no need for wholesale change at the organisation and that recruitment of inspectors and other staff is on target. They spoke to World Nuclear News during the International Atomic Energy Agency's 60th General Conference being held this week in Vienna.

An agreement in principle to form a new joint venture to develop, market and construct the Advanced Fuel Candu Reactor has been signed by Canada's SNC-Lavalin, China National Nuclear Corporation and Shanghai Electric. The reactor reuses used fuel from light water reactors.

The importance of standardisation in the evaluation of reactor designs is key to making nuclear power plant projects more efficient and cost-effective, Jerry Head, senior vice president of regulatory affairs at GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy told delegates at the World Nuclear Association's 41st Annual Symposium in London last week. Head outlined seven areas where such an approach can bring harmony to the process of managing projects from the design licensing stage through to decommissioning.

Terrestrial Energy USA has been invited by the US Department of Energy to submit the second part of its application for a US federal loan guarantee to support the licensing and construction of its Integrated Molten Salt Reactor.

X-energy and Southern Nuclear Operating Company have signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on development and commercialization of their respective advanced reactor designs.

Russia has reached two more milestones in its endeavour to close the nuclear fuel cycle. Mashinostroitelny Zavod (MSZ) - part of Russian nuclear fuel manufacturer TVEL - has completed acceptance tests of components for its ETVS-14 and ETVS-15 experimental fuel assemblies with mixed nitride fuel for the BREST and BN fast neutron reactors. MSZ has also announced the start of research and development work on the technical design of the "absorbent element" of the core of the BREST-OD-300 reactor.

UK regulators expect to complete the Generic Design Assessment (GDA) process for the Westinghouse AP1000 and Hitachi-GE's UK Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (UK ABWR) in March and December of 2017, respectively. In its quarterly GDA report for February to April 2016 issued yesterday, the Office for Nuclear Regulation also said it has "developed 'entry criteria' to provide transparency on the factors that underpin our decision on readiness to commence GDA" for China General Nuclear's HPR1000 design.

Transatomic Power Corporation has released technical information on the design of its molten salt reactor, which it says offers multiple advantages over existing generation technologies.

Japan's Toshiba Corporation has withdrawn its application to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to renew the design certification for its Advanced Boiling Water Reactor, saying it does not expect any new opportunities to build the reactor in the USA.

NuGeneration's project to build a nuclear power plant of up to 3.8 GWe gross capacity at Moorside in West Cumbria will be the first opportunity for lenders to enter the UK's nuclear power program, CEO Tom Samson told World Nuclear News in an interview.

China's CAP1400 reactor design has successfully passed the International Atomic Energy Agency's Generic Reactor Safety Review, the Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute announced today.