The UK’s Nuclear Innovation & Research Advisory Board has recommended that the government should consider investing up to GBP1 billion (USD1.3 billion) between 2021 and 2025 to boost the progress of innovation in the nuclear energy sector.

Japan's Toshiba Energy Systems & Solutions Corporation has developed oxidation-reduction treatment technology that enables certain elements to be extracted from vitrified high-level radioactive waste. The technology will allow for the reuse of those elements and a reduction in the volume of high-level waste to be disposed of.

A joint team of UK and Japanese researchers have used the UK's synchrotron science facility to analyse the internal structure and composition of a radioactive particle collected from close to the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan.

The US Department of Energy Office of Science has announced USD30 million of funding for experimental research on magnetic fusion energy science at to be carried out at international tokamak facilities.
 

The US Department of Energy has launched its Versatile Fast Neutron Source project to provide fast neutron testing capability to aid US development of advanced nuclear reactor technology. The Versatile Test Reactor, as it is also known, could be completed by 2026.

The UK's First Light Fusion has successfully completed constructing and testing its Machine 3 - the only pulsed power machine of its scale in the world dedicated to researching fusion energy. The company aims to demonstrate first fusion later this year.

Russian state atomic energy corporation Rosatom and the Russian State Academy of Sciences are to cooperate on joint scientific, technical and innovative activities in areas including nuclear energy, nuclear medicine and other areas under an agreement signed in Moscow on 7 February.

NRG is to carry out testing of materials, including graphite, for key components of Terrestrial Energy's Integral Molten Salt Reactor power plant in the High-Flux Reactor at Petten in the Netherlands under a contract announced on 5 February.

The US Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy has confirmed it awarded a total of USD111.2 million in funding to three industry partners to develop accident tolerant fuels. The awards were made to General Electric, Framatome and Westinghouse in late 2018.

The Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group (NRG) of the Netherlands has completed the irradiation testing in the High Flux Reactor of a new type of metal that will be used in a test programme of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.

The first Russian-made experimental nuclear fuel assemblies based on accident-tolerant fuel for light water reactors have been loaded for testing into the water loops of the MIR research reactor at the State Research Institute of Atomic Reactors in Dimitrovgrad.

China General Nuclear has begun irradiation testing of a prototype accident-tolerant fuel rod in a research reactor, marking the first time that Chinese-developed ATF has been irradiated.