OKG, the operator of the Oskarshamn nuclear power plant in Sweden, has applied for an environmental court ruling in preparation for the future decommissioning of unit 1. No shutdown date has yet been determined for the reactor.

A new fund set up by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) at the request of the European Commission will finance projects to rehabilitate former uranium mines and processing sites in Central Asia.

South Korea's oldest operating reactor unit will close in 2017 without a licence extension, said operator Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP).

Lithuanian state enterprise Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant has applied to the country's regulator, Vatesi, for a licence to construct and operate a surface storage facility for low- and intermediate-level short-lived waste, known as the B25 project. The company is managing the decommissioning of the plant, which was named after the nearby city of Ignalina in the municipality of Visaginas.

The nuclear expertise of Germany's Jülich Research Centre (Forschungszentrum Jülich) and the Experimental Reactor Consortium GmbH (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Versuchsreaktor, AVR) are to be combined into a new enterprise.

Russia's Petrozavodskmash has completed the manufacture of a serial batch of modified TUK-109T containers for the transport of used nuclear fuel from RBMK-1000 reactors. Petrozavodskmash is a branch of AEM Technologies, a subsidiary of Atomenergomash.

Japan expects to start the retrieval of fuel debris from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2021, the executive director of the Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation said yesterday. Three of the plant's six reactors suffered core meltdowns in the March 2011 accident, leaving melted nuclear fuel debris on the floor of their containment vessels.

EOn and Vattenfall have signed an agreement to cooperate in the decommissioning and dismantling of their jointly owned nuclear power plants in Germany.

Some 11 tonnes of "breeder" material that had been in storage at the Dounreay site in Scotland has now been transported to the Sellafield site in northern England. A further 33 tonnes of breeder material remains within the Dounreay Fast Reactor and will be transported to Sellafield later.

Sellafield Limited has awarded a contract worth up to £50 million ($78 million) to Darchem Engineering Limited for stainless steel storage boxes to store historic radioactive waste retrieved from a silo at the UK's Sellafield site. It follows the award of a similar contract earlier this month to Metalcraft.

An organizational restructuring of UK company Magnox Ltd as it streamlines its operating model will lead to a reduction of up to 1600 staff across its UK sites over the period to September 2016.

The first two vaults of the new low-level waste disposal facility at the UK's Dounreay site has begun accepting waste. Up to four additional vaults could be constructed at the facility.