Construction of non-nuclear facilities at the site of the planned Akkuyu nuclear power plant in Turkey can begin after the granting of a limited construction permit. A licence permitting full construction to start is expected to be issued in the first half of 2018.

Construction of units 5 and 6 of South Korea's Shin Kori nuclear power plant looks set to resume after an independent panel today recommended completion of the project. Work on the units - about 30% complete - was suspended in July after President Moon Jae-in issued an administrative order to halt their construction.

Hot tests have been completed on the reactor equipment of unit 4 of the Rostov nuclear power plant in Russia. The VVER-1000/V-320 reactor is scheduled for start-up this year. Atomproekt, an engineering subsidiary of the state nuclear corporation Rosatom, said the tests are a mandatory part of preparations for the physical start-up, namely fuel loading.

Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) has released a summary report of its request for expressions of interest on small modular reactors (SMRs). Responses were received from 80 organisations, including 19 expressions of interest in siting a prototype or demonstration SMR at a CNL site.

The mining of salt from the US Department of Energy's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico is expected to resume in the coming weeks. Mining of Panel 8 was halted in 2014 following separate fire and radiological events that suspended waste emplacement operations at the facility.

Although the delay in receiving the construction licence for the Hanhikivi 1 nuclear power plant will not affect the cost of the project, its impact on the commissioning schedule will become clearer later this year, Fennovoima CEO Toni Hemminki told journalists last week. The company began excavation work at the site in Pyhäjoki in northern Finland in January last year.

ASE, the engineering subsidiary of Russia's Rosatom, has installed the containment building dome for unit 2 of the nuclear power plant under construction near Ostrovets, in the Grodno region of Belarus. The unit - one of two VVER-1200 type reactors at the plant which will give 2340 MWe net capacity online - is scheduled for start-up in 2020.

The mechanical properties of the vessel head and bottom head of the Flamanville 3 EPR reactor pressure vessel are adequate and are therefore serviceable, the French nuclear regulator has concluded. However, the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN) still requires the vessel head to be replaced by the end of 2024.

Regular electricity production at Finland's Olkiluoto 3 is now expected to start in May 2019, the first-of-a-kind EPR unit's supplier consortium has told Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj. Regular production had previously been scheduled to begin at the end of 2018.

EDF is preparing for the next stage of system performance testing at the Flamanville EPR, with a view to the fuel loading and reactor start-up at the end of the fourth quarter of 2018. The company has thus confirmed its roadmap for Flamanville 3 drawn up in September 2015 and that the project cost is set at €10.5 billion (2015 rate, excluding interim interest).

The Vogtle AP1000 construction project in Georgia has marked multiple construction milestones including a concrete "super placement" for unit 3 and the lift of the 237-tonne CA03 module for unit 4.