The US Department of Energy has announced a plan to provide USD10 million over three years to advance particle accelerator technology for medical, security, energy, and industrial applications, with a focus on the development of novel "compact" accelerator technologies for cancer treatment and other uses.

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy and TerraPower are to collaborate on pursuing a public private partnership to design and construct the Versatile Test Reactor for the US Department of Energy. Utility Energy Northwest will support the joint GEH-TerraPower effort, with other parties said to be interested in joining.

France's Framatome has been awarded a contract by the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) to support research that will inform the development of new materials to be used in the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider, a major upgrade to the existing Large Hadron Collider.

Global Nuclear Fuel accident-tolerant fuel assemblies have been loaded into a US reactor for the first time. Lead test assemblies using the company's ARMOR-coated zirconium cladding and IronClad accident-tolerant fuel solutions have been installed at Exelon's Clinton boiling water reactor power plant in Illinois.

A nuclear technique has successfully reduced the tsetse fly population in Senegal without harming other insects, an eight-year study has found. The study was supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency, together with the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation. The sterile insect technique (SIT) is an insect birth control method that uses radiation to sterilise male flies.

The US Department of Energy has selected Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, as the site for a new research facility that it says will be a game-changing resource for the international nuclear physics community. The Electron Ion Collider will be designed and constructed over 10 years and cost about USD1.6-2.6 billion.

Germany's phase-out of nuclear power and increased use instead of fossil fuels could have led to 1100 additional deaths each year from air pollution, according to a study by economists at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of California at Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon University.

A ceremony was held on 15 December at the Xiangshan uranium deposit near Fuzhou city in China's Jiangxi province to mark the start of the country's deepest drilling project related to the exploration of uranium resources. China National Nuclear Corporation said a 3000-metre-deep bore hole will be drilled.

Kairos Power, Moltex Canada, Terrestrial Energy Inc and UltraSafe Nuclear Corporation have been selected as the first recipients of support under an initiative launched earlier this year to accelerate the deployment of small modular reactors in Canada, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories has announced.

UK Research and Innovation has provided initial match funding to the consortium of companies designing a new type of nuclear power station in the UK. Rolls-Royce and its partners have said a UK small modular reactor programme could contribute GBP100 billion (USD128 billion) to the UK economy and open up a global export market.

The UK Space Agency and Nuclear Decommissioning Agency have issued a challenge to smaller businesses and university start-ups to research and develop satellite-enabled technologies that could help support the country's nuclear decommissioning efforts.

TVEL, the nuclear fuel manufacturer subsidiary of Russia's Rosatom, has completed the first phase of testing its accident-tolerant fuel in a reactor, at the State Research Institute of Atomic Reactors in Dimitrovgrad.