Sellafield Limited has announced its "most significant stride ever" with the removal of the last batch of bulk metal fuel from the Pile Fuel Storage Pond in Cumbria, northwest England. The fuel has been moved to safer, more modern storage in the Fuel Handling Plant.
The Mühleberg nuclear power plant will stop generating electricity on 20 December 2019, utility BKW recently informed the Swiss nuclear safety regulator. Decommissioning of the plant is expected to start in September 2020, the company said.
US radioactive waste management specialist Kurion has announced the completion of construction and acceptance testing of its prototype tritium management solution, the Modular Detritiation System.
The Swiss nuclear safety regulator has said it is satisfied with the plans set out by the Paul Scherrer Institute for decommissioning the Proteus research reactor. The reactor was primarily used for neutron physics experiments with different nuclear fuels.
The two most highly contaminated pieces of processing equipment have been removed from the former Plutonium Finishing Plant at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Hanford site in preparation for the plant's demolition later this year.
Vattenfall has developed special gripping tools with which to remove more than 600 barrels of low- and intermediate-level waste from six storage pits at the decommissioned Brunsbüttel nuclear power plant in Germany.
OKG AB has confirmed that unit 1 of the Oskarshamn nuclear power plant in Sweden will close in 2017. Last year it announced the reactor would be shut down between 2017 and 2019.
Demolition work has begun on building K-27, the last of five gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment facilities at the former Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The US Department of Energy plans to remove all gaseous diffusion buildings from the site by the end of the year under its Vision 2016 project.
Plans for the decommissioning of three nuclear power units in Japan's Fukui Prefecture have been submitted to the country's nuclear regulator for approval. Mihama units 1 and 2 and unit 1 of the Tsuruga plant were among five reactors officially taken out of service last April.
Japan's nuclear regulator has given the go-ahead to Chubu Electric Power Company to start removing "peripheral" equipment from units 1 and 2 of its Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka prefecture. Both units were permanently shut down in January 2009.