The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) could license a non-light water reactor under its current regulatory framework, but needs input from the nuclear industry and the US Department of Energy (DOE) to optimize its planning and resources, commission chairman Stephen Burns has told the American Nuclear Society (ANS).

Westinghouse has been awarded a contract to dismantle the reactor pressure vessel internals of the two-unit Barsebäck nuclear power plant in Sweden.

Entergy announced today it will close the single-unit James A FitzPatrick nuclear power station in New York state - in late 2016 or early 2017. The company cited significantly reduced plant revenues, poor market design and high operational costs as key drivers behind its decision.

The owners of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in the USA have reached a $400 million settlement with Nuclear Electric Insurance Limited for outages caused by the failures of replacement steam generators. Pedro Pizarro, president of Southern California Edison, majority owner of the San Onofre plant, said yesterday that the settlement appropriately resolves the plant owners' claims.

A hatch weighing some 2.6 tonnes has been removed from the used fuel pool of unit 3 at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. The hatch was one of the largest remaining pieces of rubble in the pool.

Sweden's Ringhals 2 is to be decommissioned in 2019 and Ringhals 1 in 2020, majority owner Vattenfall announced yesterday following an extraordinary general meeting of plant operator Ringhals AB.

German utility Eon has decided that units 1 and 2 of the Oskarshamn nuclear power plant in Sweden will be shut down permanently. Unit 3 is unaffected by the decision, which was announced today by OKG AB, of which the EOn group is the major shareholder.

The findings of a four-year study on the corrosion behaviours of magnesium and uranium may help to significantly reduce the timescale and costs of cleaning up the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo at Sellafield, one of the UK's most hazardous buildings.

The single-unit Pilgrim plant - the only nuclear power plant in the US state of Massachusetts - will be permanently shut down by mid-2019, owner Entergy announced today. The utility said the continued operation of the plant is not economically viable.

A stress test ordered by the German government has shown that the country's nuclear energy suppliers are able to cover the costs of decommissioning their power plants and disposing of radioactive waste.

A US Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management project to demolish and decontaminate the site of the world's first plutonium processing facility at the USA's Los Alamos National Laboratory has reached a milestone with the demolition of a key building.

The prime ministers of France and Japan attended high-level talks in Tokyo on enhancing nuclear cooperation between the two countries. The talks included cooperation in nuclear safety and research on decommissioning nuclear facilities.