Rosatom subsidiary Atomflot has accepted delivery of the Sibir, its newest nuclear-powered icebreaker. The twin-reactor vessel was officially handed over by the Baltic Shipyard which built it.

The inner dome has been placed on the VVER-TOI reactor under construction in Russia at Kursk-II 2, while a VVER-1200 unit at Rooppur 2 in Bangladesh is approaching the same stage with the placement of its fifth containment ring.

TVEL has launched a new fabrication facility for pressurised water reactor fuel at the Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant site in Russia. The facility will enable Rosatom's fuel division to supply modified versions of its TVS-K nuclear fuel to PWR plants around the world, the company said.
 

The first equipment has arrived at a deconversion plant being built by Russia's Rosatom and France's Orano in eastern Siberia. The plant is part of a long-term project to manage and make use of depleted uranium stocks in Russia.

The first full assemblies of a new kind of nuclear fuel have been loaded into Russia's Balakovo 1 for a five-year trial. Rosatom's REMIX fuel promises to close the fuel cycle using today's light-water reactors.

After 45 years of power generation, the first reactor at Russia's Kursk nuclear power plant was permanently shut down on 19 December. Plant owner and operator Rosenergoatom celebrated its achievements and looked forward to new units under construction to replace it.

The first well has been drilled at the Kolichikan uranium deposit in Russia's Republic of Buryatia, near the border with Mongolia. It will be an in-situ leach uranium mine with around 237 wells.

Rosatom has signed a framework agreement with the government of Serbia to build a nuclear technology centre in the country, including a cyclotron for medical isotope production. It comes as part of a growing trend of Serbian interest in nuclear.

France's Framatome and Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom have signed a new strategic cooperation agreement further expanding the companies' efforts to develop fuel fabrication and instrumentation and control  technologies. The new agreement expands the companies' existing relationship, established through a 2017 Memorandum of Understanding, creating a framework for joint work in new areas.

Russia's Kalinin nuclear power plant shows a commitment to safety, said a team assembled by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which took some new practices away to share with the global industry.

Russian manufacturers are dispatching several components to Turkey's first nuclear power plant, Akkuyu, which is currently the largest nuclear construction site in the world with 13,000 people working on a daily basis on the site that will house four large reactors.

Russia's newest nuclear-powered icebreaker, the Sibir, has left the Baltic Shipyard and headed into the Gulf of Finland for sea trials. Two more identical ships are under construction at the shipyard near Saint Petersburg.