Russia has rejected the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA's) stance towards Crimea and, specifically, Sevastopol in a draft of the Vienna-based organization's 2014 Annual Report.

Energoatom, Ukraine's nuclear power plant operator, has drawn attention to misreporting by some Ukrainian media that have claimed the country's regulator does not intend to renew the operating licence of unit 2 of the South Ukraine nuclear power plant.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has secured the funding required to complete the Chernobyl New Safe Confinement by the end of 2017. The giant structure is being built to cover the destroyed reactor 4 on the site of the 1986 nuclear accident in Ukraine.

Firefighters were today still battling to extinguish Ukraine's worst forest fire in 23 years, but state officials said its spread towards the site of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant had been halted. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said yesterday that the situation was already under control and that there had been no changes to levels of background radiation.

French engineering company Areva has for the first time signed a contract with Energoatom for the supply of enriched uranium to be used at Ukraine's nuclear power reactors. The first batches will be delivered in 2015.

The Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine has officially entered the decommissioning phase, following approval by the country's nuclear regulator. The first phase of decommissioning is the so-called final shutdown and preservation stage, which is expected to take ten years.

Energoatom president Yuri Nedashkovsky has ordered the creation of a talent pool from which his future successor would be chosen. Sixteen candidates from within the company and its subsidiaries have been selected.

Ukraine's Zaporozhe nuclear power plant, Europe's biggest, has become the world's first thermal and nuclear power plant to produce more than one trillion kilowatt hours of electricity.

Energoatom, Ukrenergo and Polenergia have signed a memorandum of understanding on a project to export electricity via European grids. Energoatom which operates all of Ukraine's nuclear power plants, said the agreement will make it possible to use all its available nuclear capacity and attract funds for the completion of the third and fourth reactors of its Khmelnitsky nuclear power plant.

Poland will be an important market in Europe for Westinghouse, Mike Kirst, the company's vice president for strategy and external relations for Europe, said in an interview with EurActiv published today.

Construction of the Chernobyl New Safe Confinement on the site of the 1986 nuclear accident is entering its final stage, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said yesterday.

Energoatom has announced plans to increase its cooperation with Westinghouse that include an expansion in the use of the US-based company's nuclear fuel, a memorandum aimed at familiarising Energoatom personnel with the AP1000 reactor design, and Westinghouse's participation in a future fuel fabrication plant in Ukraine.