Excavation of the first final disposal tunnel has started at the Onkalo underground used nuclear fuel repository near Olkiluoto, Finnish radioactive waste management company Posiva Oy announced today. The repository - the first in the world for used fuel - is expected to begin operations in the mid-2020s.

The sixth Poloidal Field coil of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor was inserted into the fusion machine's tokamak pit on April 21. The milestone marks the beginning of the assembly of ITER's magnet system, which will control the shape and stability of the ITER plasma. First plasma at ITER - in Cadarache, France - is planned for 2025, with deuterium-tritium fusion experiments commencing in 2035.

Tests that simulate the temperatures and pressures which the reactor systems will be subjected to during normal operation have been started at unit 3 of the Vogtle plant near Waynesboro, Georgia. Meanwhile, the final module has been put in place at unit 4, marking the last major crane lift at the project site.

Cold functional tests were completed yesterday at unit 3 of the Karachi nuclear power plant in Pakistan, China National Nuclear Corporation has announced. Units 2 and 3 at the site are China's first exports of the Hualong One reactor design, promoted on the international market as the HPR1000. Karachi 2 was synchronised with the electricity grid last month.

The reactor pressure vessel and first two steam generators for Rooppur unit 2 have started their journey from the Volgodonsk branch of AEM-Technology JSC in Russia to the construction site in Bangladesh.

Concreting of the cooling tower at the first unit of the Kursk II nuclear power plant in western Russia has started. At a height of 179 metres, the structure will be the tallest cooling tower in Russia. It is expected to be fully completed by 2024.

The Volgodonsk branch of Russia's AEM-Technology JSC has dispatched the first-ever reactor pressure vessel for the VVER-TOI (typical optimised, with enhanced information) reactor design. The RPV is being transported to the construction site of the Kursk II nuclear power plant, which will be the first to use the new design. Hydraulic testing of the RPV for the first Kursk II unit was completed in December last year.

Japanese engineering, procurement, and construction firm JGC Holdings Corporation has agreed to invest USD40 million in small modular reactor developer NuScale Power. It will also partner with Fluor Corporation - NuScale's majority investor - on the deployment of NuScale power plants.

EDF notified France's nuclear safety regulator, the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire, on 3 March of a significant event concerning a design anomaly on three nozzles of the main primary system of the EPR reactor under construction at Flamanville. The concerned nozzles were produced in 2011 based on a 2006 design file. The regulator has asked EDF how it plans to deal with this anomaly.

The importance of Egypt's first nuclear power plant is comparable to that of the Aswan High Dam, Russia’s Ambassador to Egypt Georgy Borisenko said this week. Built across the Nile in Aswan, Egypt, between 1960 and 1970, the world's biggest embankment dam was designed by the Moscow-based Hydroproject Institute. Borisenko made the comparison during a visit to the El Dabaa plant's construction site, together with the chairman of Egypt’s Nuclear Power Plants Authority, Amged El-Wakeel.

Rosatom announced today that first concrete has been poured for the third unit of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant under construction in the Mersin province of Turkey. The Russian and Turkish heads of state joined the ceremony held to mark the event by video link. The Akkuyu nuclear power plant project is based on an intergovernmental agreement the two countries signed in 2010.

Construction of a new facility for the storage of low-level radioactive waste has begun at the Dessel site in Belgium. Meanwhile, a new storage facility for low and intermediate-level waste is planned at the Netherlands' centralised radioactive waste processing and storage facility.