Innovation through collaboration was the key message delivered by NNL Chief Science and Technology Officer Andrew Sherry, at NNL SciTec 2018, the annual event hosted by the UK National Nuclear Laboratory.

Paul Howarth, CEO of the UK's National Nuclear Laboratory, gives his account of the SciTec 2018 conference held this week in Liverpool, England.

The UK's Office for Nuclear Regulation has laid its latest Corporate Plan before Parliament in which it lists its ten priorities for 2018-2019. These include developing a new regime to meet safeguarding obligations following Parliament's decision to exit Euratom, along with measures to support the implementation of new emergency planning arrangements as a result of the Basic Standards Directive.

The UK government has launched an open consultation on the future regulation of nuclear sites in the final stages of decommissioning and clean-up. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said the consultation seeks to enable a "more flexible approach that can optimise waste management, thereby realising environmental benefits and reducing costs".

A laser-cutting robotic snake has been deployed on the highly-radioactive core of the redundant Dragon reactor at Winfrith in the UK. Meanwhile, machine learning algorithms to increase capabilities in several crucial areas of nuclear robotics - including waste handling, cell decommissioning and site monitoring with mobile robots - are to be created by a team of computer scientists from the University of Lincoln.

EDF Energy has announced that Reactor 3 of its Hunterston B nuclear power plant in Scotland, UK, will remain offline while new cracks are investigated in the unit's graphite core. Whilst these cracks are expected as part of the ageing process of the graphite bricks, the latest cracks have appeared quicker than anticipated.

The Energy Technologies Institute yesterday released a summary report from its Nuclear Cost Drivers project which identifies eight "key drivers" and 35 "credible opportunities" to reduce the cost of generating electricity using nuclear power. The study is led by Clean Tech Catalyst, Ltd, working with Lucid Strategy.

Nuclear growth is at a 25-year high driven by the need for clean and reliable electricity, World Nuclear Association Director General Agneta Rising told the World Nuclear Fuel Cycle conference last week. While market problems persist in the USA, China's rate of nuclear approvals is picking up, other keynote speakers said.

Estonian-founded cyber security specialist company Guardtime has planned and executed a custom cyber exercise for the UK's civil nuclear sector.

With the UK having the lowest percentage of female engineers in Europe, at less than 10%, the UK is in a clear need to address this alarming statistic, by looking at ways the industry can become more inclusive and attractive to this integral female talent, writes Anne-Charlotte Dagorn.

Rolls-Royce is to modernise control rod systems in 14 of China General Nuclear's CPR1000 nuclear power units in China. The UK engineering firm has also signed long-term service contracts with three Chinese plants.

An international multi-laboratory and university collaboration has been launched to develop detection hardware and algorithms to improve non-proliferation detector capabilities for remote monitoring of nuclear reactors. Its developers say the initial project will be the first demonstration of remote monitoring of individual reactor operations at a significant distance, using scalable water-based technology.