The 'western' and 'eastern' halves of the arch of the New Safe Confinement at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine have been joined together, SSE ChNPP, the state company tasked with managing the plant, said on 24 July.

Rosatom has rejected Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's claim that the Russian company failed to honour agreements on construction of a nuclear fuel fabrication facility and completion of units 3 and 4 at Khmelnitsky nuclear power plant.

The Ukrainian government's approval last month of a pilot project to transfer electricity from unit 2 of the Khmelnitsky nuclear power plant to the European Union will not only fund the addition of two reactors, but will also "open up new prospects" for the country to export power to European markets, the head of Energoatom said yesterday.

Ukraine is preparing the legal document required to cancel its contract with Russia concerning the completion of two units at the Khmelnitski nuclear power plant. The move was announced yesterday by Svetlana Kulchitskaya, deputy head of the atomic energy and nuclear industry department of the Ministry of Energy and Coal.

Atomstroyexport, part of the ASE-NIAEP-AEP engineering subsidiary of Russia's Rosatom, has closed down its office in Ukraine. The closure was announced yesterday in the Ukrainian parliamentary newspaper Golos Ukraini.

The deputy assistant secretary of the US Department of Energy last week met with the president of Ukrainian nuclear power plant operator Energoatom as part of preparations for an emergency response plan for Ukraine's energy sector during the winter season.

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.