Lightbridge Corporation has entered into a Joint Development Agreement with Areva NP to assess establishing a joint venture this year for the development, manufacture and commercialization of fuel assemblies based on Lightbridge's "next generation" metallic nuclear fuel technology.

An agreement to develop accelerator-driven systems has been signed between China General Nuclear and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Such systems could transmutate used nuclear fuel or run subcritical nuclear reactors.

Russia and Kazakhstan are preparing to sign an intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in research and development in the nuclear energy sector, Rosatom said yesterday. Vyacheslav Pershukov, the Russian state nuclear corporation's head of design and innovation, led a delegation to Kazakhstan last week to discuss potential joint projects in the sector.

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 US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has authorized its staff to issue a construction permit for Shine Medical Technologies' first-of-a-kind medical radioisotope production facility to be built in Janesville, Wisconsin.

Terrestrial Energy is submitting its Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) design to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) for pre-licensing review, the Canadian company announced today. The submission marks a first step towards an eventual licence application.

A new graphite irradiation research program has been launched in support of ageing management of Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactors (AGRs) in the UK. Last week, EDF Energy announced new scheduled closure dates for four of its UK AGR nuclear power plants.

Hungary has agreed to further cooperation with Iran on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, its minister of foreign affairs and trade, Péter Szijjártó, announced last week. He said the two countries would "continue and expand" the training of Iranian nuclear experts as well as establish research and scientific cooperation in the use of nuclear energy.

Ahead of the start of construction later this year of a full-scale Synroc waste treatment plant, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (Ansto) is preparing to upscale the technology from a research level to an industrial scale in a pilot plant.

China General Nuclear (CGN) has loaded self-developed fuel assemblies and tube assemblies into unit 1 of the Ling Ao nuclear power plant in Guangdong province for irradiation tests.

Scientists using the UK's synchrotron science facility - Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire, England - have presented their research into radioactive waste containment at the world's largest science conference - the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, held on 11-15 February in Washington DC. In a statement yesterday, Diamond Light Source Ltd said this work may help to inform the UK's policy on radioactive waste disposal.

Canada has marked the fortieth anniversary of operations at the world's largest cyclotron accelerator, the 520 MeV Main Cyclotron at the Triumf national laboratory for particle physics. Celebrations were attended by science minister Kirsty Duncan.