US utility Duke Energy has announced plans to decommission the single-unit Crystal River nuclear power plant in Florida by 2027. Decommissioning of the plant, which was permanently shut down in 2013, had originally been expected to take an additional 50 years to complete.

Work has begun to demolish the last two buildings that once supported the gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment process at Oak Ridge in Tennessee. Buildings K-131 and K-631 are the most contaminated structures remaining on the 2,200-acre (890 hectare) site.

Fuel transfer operations at the shut down San Onofre nuclear power plant in California can resume following approval by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Such operations were suspended following an incident last August during the lowering of a used fuel canister into a storage vault.

Three Mile Island unit 1 will shut down by 30 September as no state-level policy solution can now be enacted in time to reverse the premature retirement of the Pennsylvania plant, Exelon Generation announced yesterday.

Sellafield Ltd has awarded four 20-year contracts which together form the new Programme and Project Partnership. The company said it will work collaboratively with the four partners - Doosan Babcock Ltd, Kellogg Brown & Root Ltd, Morgan Sindall Infrastructure and Wood plc - to deliver major projects in support of the site's 100-year decommissioning programme.

Final system-wide trials began yesterday of the new dry interim used fuel storage facility at the site of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. The facility is expected to be handed over to the state-owned enterprise Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the coming months.

EnergySolutions is to decommission the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant in Nebraska - which was permanently shut down in October 2016 - under a contract signed yesterday with owner Omaha Public Power District.

The board of directors of Norway's Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) yesterday decided to permanently cease operations of the JEEP-II research reactor at Kjeller. Earlier this year, IFE said investigations had shown "extensive and costly improvements" were needed to keep JEEP-II - Norway's last reactor - in operation.

Dounreay Site Restoration Limited has awarded six framework contracts - potentially worth up to a combined GBP400 million (USD 518 million) - for decommissioning services at the Dounreay site in Scotland.

Entergy Corp has agreed to sell the Indian Point Energy Center to a subsidiary of Holtec International following the shut-down of the final reactor at the site, which is planned for 2021. Holtec-SNC Lavalin joint venture Comprehensive Decommissioning Inc will decommission the plant on an accelerated timescale.

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe visited the Fukushima Daiichi site today as the process to remove used fuel from unit 3 officially began. It has taken several years for Tepco to remove debris from the reactor building service floor and prepare for this work to reduce the hazard at the accident site.

Orano TN's NUHOMS dry storage systems will be allowed to store used nuclear fuel with significantly shorter cooling times and higher decay heat under licensing amendments approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.