Kyushu Electric Power Company today began loading fuel into the core of unit 3 at its Genkai nuclear power plant in Japan's Saga prefecture. The reactor, together with unit 4, is expected to be restarted later this year.

The loading of fuel assemblies into the core of unit 3 at the Ohi nuclear power plant in Japan's Fukui Prefecture will begin tomorrow, Kansai Electric Power Company announced. The utility plans to return both units 3 and 4 at the plant to commercial operation by mid-2018.

An internal investigation of the primary containment vessel of unit 2 at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan was completed as scheduled today, Tokyo Electric Power Company has announced. The survey - using a suspended pan-tilt camera attached to a telescopic guiding pipe - identified deposits and fuel assembly components at the bottom of the pedestal area.

The Atmea joint venture between France's Areva and Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) is to be reorganised following the sale of Areva's reactor business to EDF, MHI and Assystem. Atmea was created in 2007 to develop, market, license and sell the 1100 MWe Atmea-1 pressurised water reactor combining both companies' technologies.

Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited has announced a further three-year delay in the schedule for completing the Rokkasho reprocessing plant and J-MOX mixed-oxide fuel fabrication plant. The delay is due to additional regulatory requirements.

A suspended pan-tilt camera attached to a telescopic guiding pipe will soon be used to investigate the interior of the primary containment vessel of the damaged unit 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan. The device was developed by Toshiba Energy Systems & Solutions and the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning.

Units 6 and 7 of Tokyo Electric Power Company's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture meet Japan's new regulatory standards, the Nuclear Regulation Authority announced today. They are the first of the country's boiling water reactors determined to meet the standards.

Kansai Electric Power Company has today announced that it will not seek permission to restart units 1 and 2 of its Ohi nuclear power plant in Japan's Fukui Prefecture. The company will now apply to decommission the two 1175 MWe pressurised water reactors, which are approaching 40 years old.

Kansai Electric Power Company has applied to the Japanese regulator for pre-service inspections of unit 3 of its Mihama nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture. These inspections mark the final regulatory stage in the restart procedure for the country's reactors.

A Japanese high court has today overruled a lower court decision that allowed Shikoku Electric Power Company to continue operating unit 3 of its Ikata nuclear power plant in Ehime Prefecture. Ikata 3 is one of five units that have so far restarted since Japan took all its operable reactors offline for safety checks following the March 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The governor of Japan's Fukui Prefecture has today approved the restart of units 3 and 4 of Kansai Electric Power Company's Ohi nuclear power plant. The utility reportedly plans to restart both units by mid-March.

Toshiba Corporation has decided to "explore alternatives" to selling to a third party its claims against Westinghouse Electric Company. This would allow the Japanese electronics company to "significantly reduce the internal resources that it is required to allocate to WEC’s rehabilitation proceedings, and to focus them on cultivating its new businesses".