Some 200,000 job-years of employment are created by each 1000 MWe of nuclear capacity constructed, according to a new study by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The US Department of Energy's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has received over 50 shipments of transuranic waste since shipments resumed in April.

Japan and Russia have signed a memorandum on the exchange of information on reactor physics experiments for minor actinoid transmutation for radioactive waste processing and management. The document was signed on 6 September in Vladivostok, Russia, during the Eastern Economic Forum by Rosatom Director-General Alexey Likhachov and Japan Atomic Energy Agency President Toshio Kodama.

The world's oldest nuclear waste store - the Pile Fuel Cladding Silo at Sellafield, England - has been cut open for the first time, Sellafield Ltd and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority announced yesterday. Built in the 1950s when the site's purpose was to make material for nuclear weapons, the silo is a locked vault that was "never designed to be opened", they said.

The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute has signed contracts with several domestic companies to develop technologies for decommissioning Kori unit 1, which was permanently shut down in June. It is the first South Korean reactor to enter decommissioning.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has completed its technical assessment of a draft environmental impact statement for a proposed Near Surface Disposal Facility for radioactive waste from Canadian Nuclear Laboratories' Chalk River site. CNL must now address all federal and public comments received on the proposal before submitting its final EIS.

The UK's National Nuclear Laboratory announced yesterday that new research into nuclear energy generation proposes a "paradigm change" to support future reactor systems which 'eat up' used fuel without prior reprocessing to 'squeeze out' a factor of up to 20 times more energy from nuclear fuel. The systems could lead, NNL said, to a "significantly simpler" fuel cycle, an end to the accumulation of used fuel, and the elimination of any waste which would need to be stored for many thousands of years, while providing large-scale and secure low carbon electricity.

Uranium enrichment company Urenco yesterday said it expects to commission the Tails Management Facility (TMF) at Capenhurst in the UK in 2018, after construction delays. The facility, to deconvert depleted uranium hexafluoride tails, had previously been expected to enter service this year.

Bulgaria started construction of a national repository for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste yesterday, marking the occasion with a ceremony. The repository is being built at the Radiana site, close to the Kozloduy nuclear power plant.

Global engineering consultancy Amec Foster Wheeler has been awarded two framework contracts by the UK's LLW Repository Ltd to carry out environmental safety case and waste characterisation work. The combined value of the contracts is about £4.0 million ($5.1 million).

All the basic conditions are now in place for remediation work to begin at several uranium legacy sites in Kyrgyzstan after the country ratified a framework agreement with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The European Union is to provide an initial contribution of €16.5 million ($19.4 million) for the work.

The first shipment of used nuclear fuel assemblies from Russian nuclear submarines has arrived at the radiochemical plant Mayak in Chelyabinsk, near the Ural Mountains, from the former base of the Russian Northern Fleet at Andreeva Bay.