Microreactor startup Radiant Industries has announced that the US Department of Energy has reviewed and approved the Safety Design Strategy for its Kaleidos microreactor in the National Reactor Innovation Center's Demonstration of Microreactor Experiments test bed at Idaho National Laboratory.

Steady Energy said it is set to start construction of its first LDR-50 district heating reactor pilot plant in Finland next year, with potential sites including the Finnish capital Helsinki and two other cities.

Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom announced it has developed an innovative crystallisation refining technology for the purification and separation of nuclear materials from used nuclear fuel.

Russian state corporation Rosatom says that for the first time it has used its own technology for laser strengthening of steel in the manufacturing of rotor parts of turbine pumps for nuclear power plants.

Thorizon of the Netherlands has signed a cooperation agreement with France's EDF R&D to advance the Thorizon One molten salt reactor design. Meanwhile, Blue Capsule has signed a partnership agreement with the French Alternative Energies & Atomic Energy Commission, from which it was spun off, for the development of its small modular reactor.

The UK's National Nuclear Laboratory has appointed engineering group Jacobs to help in the development of a high temperature gas reactor design that it is developing in partnership with the Japan Atomic Energy Agency.

X-energy and Cavendish Nuclear have commissioned Teesside University to undertake a study of the potential regional benefits and economic impacts of a proposed power plant in Hartlepool, UK, based on X-energy's Xe-100 high temperature gas-cooled reactor.

Private Japanese fusion technology company Kyoto Fusioneering and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories have formed a joint venture - named Fusion Fuel Cycles Inc - aimed at developing and deploying deuterium-tritium fusion fuel cycle technologies.

The UK Atomic Energy Authority has appointed Canadian engineering firm AtkinsRéalis to deliver the detailed design of an isotope separation system to strengthen research into sustainable fusion delivery.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has been awarded a contract to supply a further 12 outer vertical targets for the divertor to be used in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. The Japanese company has already delivered six of the components.

Hydrogen can be produced for less than EUR3.50 (USD3.80) per kilogram using a combination of solid oxide electrolysis cells and small modular reactors, significantly cheaper than alternative methods, a new study led by Dutch nuclear energy development company ULC-Energy BV has concluded.

The Swedish Energy Agency has granted SEK50 million (USD4.7 million) for a project led by researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg for the development of an entire Generation IV nuclear power system. The project also aims to rebuild national expertise in nuclear technology science.