Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj has issued an acceptance certificate to the Areva-Siemens consortium for the Olkiluoto 3 EPR, which began regular electricity production on 16 April. It said the 1600 MWe reactor is scheduled to enter commercial operation on 1 May.

Test production has been completed at the Olkiluoto 3 EPR in Finland and the plant has now started regular electricity production, operator Teollisuuden Voima Oyj has announced. TVO said the reactor will soon be declared to be in commercial operation.

Finland's State Council has granted a new operating licence to Fortum for its low and intermediate-level waste disposal facility at the Loviisa nuclear power plant. The new licence allows the repository to be operated until 2090, instead of 2055 under the previous licence, and now includes waste from the decommissioning of the Loviisa plant.

US micro reactor developer Last Energy has announced power purchase agreements for 34 units of its plants with four industrial partners across Poland and the UK. Meanwhile, Finland's Fortum is collaborating with Outokumpu to explore the use of small modular reactors to power its steel manufacturing operations.

Britain's Rolls-Royce SMR has signed memorandums of understanding to explore the deployment of its small modular reactor in Finland and Sweden, as well as to help post-war recovery in Ukraine.

US company GSE Systems Inc has been awarded a contract by Finnish power company Teollisuuden Voima Oyj to upgrade the training simulators for units 1 and 2 of the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant.

Finnish radioactive waste management company Posiva Oy has completed the drilling of the first two deposition holes at the Onkalo underground used nuclear fuel repository near Olkiluoto using a new boring machine which was operated by its own personnel. The holes are located at a depth of 430 metres in the deposition tunnel built for the Joint Functional Test.

The Finnish government has granted Fortum an extension to the operating licence for the two-unit Loviisa nuclear power plant, allowing the plant to continue generating power until the end of 2050.

Fortum is capable of continuing to safely operate the Loviisa nuclear power plant until 2050, Finland's Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority has told the country's Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment. The government is expected to issue a decision on extending the two-unit plant's operating licence in the coming months.

Three of the six emergency diesel generators from the shuttered Krümmel nuclear power plant in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein are being transported for use at the Loviisa plant in Finland.

Finnish mining company Terrafame plans to start recovering natural uranium as a byproduct of zinc and nickel production at its Sotkamo mine in the north-east of the country by the summer of 2024.

Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation has signed a memorandum of understanding with Finland's Lappeenranta University of Technology to explore the deployment of a Micro-Modular Reactor in Lappeenranta. Meanwhile, USNC has signed an MoU with Canadian privately held investment firm Portland Holdings Investco Limited to promote the MMR in the Middle East, North Africa and the Caribbean regions.