New NP - the Areva NP subsidiary holding the Areva Group's nuclear reactor operations - has been renamed Framatome following its sale to EDF, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Assystem. Framatome is the name of a former French reactor vendor from which Areva was originally created.

Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj announced today that hot functional tests have started at the first-of-a-kind EPR unit at Olkiluoto. These key pre-operational tests ensure coolant circuits and nuclear safety systems are functioning properly before fuel is loaded.

Nuclear power accounted for a fifth of total electricity produced in the UK last year and it remains the largest single source of low carbon electricity in the UK, providing 46% of the low carbon electricity produced, with wind, solar, hydro and biomass providing the remainder, according to the Nuclear Industry Association's first Activity Report, issued today. With two-thirds of all dispatchable power capacity retiring between 2010 and 2030, including all but one of the country's existing nuclear stations, the NIA warns that this will need to be replaced with a new fleet to continue providing the reliable, secure low carbon power the UK will need.

NAC KazAtomProm will reduce planned uranium production by 20% to better align output with demand, the company announced today. The cuts will be enacted for a period of three years beginning in January 2018, it added.

The sale of Toshiba Corporation's 70% holding in Italian heavy equipment manufacturer Mangiarotti SpA to Westinghouse UK Holdings Ltd has been completed after receiving approval by the US Bankruptcy Court of New York. Toshiba has written off EUR110 million ($128 million) of debts owed to it by Mangiarotti as part of the transfer.

A new report by Ontario's Financial Accountability Office has confirmed the province's plan to refurbish ten nuclear reactors at Bruce and Darlington, and extend the life of six reactors at Pickering, will provide the a long-term supply of relatively low-cost, low emissions electricity over the period to 2064.

Honeywell is temporarily to suspend uranium hexafluoride production at its Metropolis, Illinois plant pending an improvement in business conditions, the company announced yesterday. The USA's only uranium conversion plant has been in a scheduled outage since October.

A small number of fuel rods supplied to reactors in France and Switzerland have been affected by quality control issues. EDF Group said today that Areva had notified it of quality control deviations on certain rods, which meant the supplier was unable to demonstrate that quality control to substantiate that the leak tightness of those rods had been properly performed.

The United Arab Emirates' nuclear energy programme is one of the world's most diverse, multinational and multicultural, Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation vice chairwoman Sheikha Lubna bint Khalid Al Qasimi said in a special presentation on the final day of the Abu Dhabi international ministerial conference on nuclear power.

The US Department of Energy has announced up to $20 million of funding for projects to identify and develop innovative technologies for lower cost and safer advanced nuclear reactors. The funding is part of a new programme under the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) initiative.

Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) has released a summary report of its request for expressions of interest on small modular reactors (SMRs). Responses were received from 80 organisations, including 19 expressions of interest in siting a prototype or demonstration SMR at a CNL site.

The mechanical properties of the vessel head and bottom head of the Flamanville 3 EPR reactor pressure vessel are adequate and are therefore serviceable, the French nuclear regulator has concluded. However, the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN) still requires the vessel head to be replaced by the end of 2024.