National nuclear safety regulators will have more independence and a new peer-review system under an amended EU Nuclear Safety Directive which was approved today.

Russian regulator Rostechnadzor has granted Rosenergoatom a ten-year service life extension for the Kalinin 1 nuclear power unit until 2025.

The Finnish nuclear regulator needs another six months to review Posiva's application to build a waste encapsulation plant and a final repository at Olkiluoto.

Geologic faults that run beneath the Tsuruga plant are not active, said an international expert team which also recommended better communication between plant owner Japan Atomic Power Company and regulators.

Eighteen months after being shut down to avoid new taxes, the owners of Spain's Garoña nuclear power plant have applied to government to bring the plant back into operation on a longer operating licence.

Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) has requested a five-year extension to the government's decision in principle to construct a fourth reactor at the Olkiluoto plant. The request stems from delays in building the third unit there.

Japan Atomic Power Company has requested a safety review of unit 2 at its Tokai plant in Ibaraki prefecture. It becomes the eighteenth Japanese reactor to seek permission to restart.

DTE Energy has applied to the US nuclear regulator for a 20-year extension to the operating licence of the Fermi 2 plant in Michigan. If granted, the single-unit plant could operate until 2045.

A full construction licence has been issued for the first of two units at the Ostrovets plant in Belarus, allowing the reactor and plant buildings to be built. First concrete was poured for the unit in late 2013 after the country's nuclear regulator granted a permit for just the foundations to be built.

The Xudabao site in China's Liaoning province has been approved for the construction of the first two of six AP1000 units planned there.

CORRECTED The operating licences of five US nuclear power reactors have been transferred from Constellation Energy Nuclear Group (CENG) to Exelon, making it the third-largest nuclear operator in the world.