British engineering group Rolls-Royce has opened new offices at Space Park Leicester to develop its expertise in nuclear power applications for space. Being based there will enable Rolls-Royce employees to better collaborate with researchers from the University of Leicester.

A prototype system for General Fusion's Fusion Demonstration Plant has successfully demonstrated a critical element of the Canadian company's proprietary Magnetised Target Fusion technology.

Deep borehole disposal is a viable, cost-effective solution for all of the intermediate and high-level long-lived radioactive waste that is being temporarily stored by five European countries, according to a feasibility study by Deep Isolation. The study was commissioned by Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning on behalf of the European Repository Development Organisation, a multinational group established in 2021 to address the challenges of safely managing long-lived radioactive wastes either separately or in one combined mined repository.

Neutrino detection kit has been installed within the containment of Argentina's Atucha 2 reactor in support of a US-Argentine experiment to learn more about the mysterious particles.

The UK will build a high-temperature gas reactor as the centrepiece of its Advanced Modular Reactor Research, Development & Demonstration Programme, energy minister Greg Hands has confirmed. "I'm pleased to announce that we will focus on HTGRs as the technology choice for the programme moving forward," he told the Nuclear2021 conference organised in London by the Nuclear Industry Association yesterday. His statement served as a confirmation of the technology, which had emerged as the UK government's preference after a round of consultations earlier this year.

The US Department of Energy has awarded funding to the Nuclear Alternative Project to study the potential siting of small reactors in Puerto Rico. Funding also goes to address hurdles to the use of small reactors in commercial shipping and to support the development of advanced reactor designs. 

A consortium including Italy's Ansaldo Nucleare and Romania's Reinvent Energy has been awarded a contract worth about EUR20.0 million (USD22.5 million) for the design, procurement, installation and commissioning of a research facility for the development of lead-cooled reactors. The Advanced Thermo-Hydraulics Experiment for Nuclear Application facility will be built at the RATEN-ICN research centre near Pitesti in southern Romania.

Carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity generated by the UK's newest nuclear power plants will be even lower than wind and solar power, a new analysis has confirmed. A detailed and independently verified study into lifetime emissions from Hinkley Point C was carried out for EDF by environmental specialists Ricardo Energy & Environment and verified by engineering consultants WSP.

Southern Company and the US Department of Energy have signed an agreement to design, construct and operate the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment - a proof-of-concept critical fast-spectrum salt reactor. Southern will lead a collaborative effort to build the MCRE - which it says will be the world's first fast-spectrum salt reactor to achieve criticality - at Idaho National Laboratory.

Researchers at the US Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory have developed a new method of simulating what happens to a nuclear fuel pin when it overheats, using a newly developed detector which they plan to use in future tests of advanced light-water reactor fuel designs, beginning next year.

Lightbridge Ltd has completed work to design an experiment for the irradiation of samples of its metallic fuel material in the Advanced Test Reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory. The work was carried out in collaboration with INL under the US Department of Energy's Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear voucher programme and marks a milestone towards testing of the material in the reactor.

Five sites - one in Scotland and four in England - have been shortlisted to host the UK's prototype fusion energy plant - the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production. The site of the demonstration plant, due to begin operating by 2040, is expected to be announced at the end of next year.