The UK's National Grid said today it has "paused" plans for grid infrastructure work needed for the Moorside nuclear power plant whilst developer NuGeneration conducts a strategic review of the project. National Grid unveiled proposals last October for a £2.8 billion ($3.4 billion) project to connect the planned plant in West Cumbria to the country's electricity network, ahead of ten weeks of consultation it completed in early January.

The first vacuum vessel sector sub-assembly tool for the Iter fusion reactor has passed factory acceptance tests in South Korea. The tool is by far the largest custom-designed tool for the reactor, currently under construction at Cadarache in southern France.

Georgia Power's interim assessment agreement with Westinghouse has been extended until 3 June, after which Southern Nuclear and Georgia Power will take over project management for the Vogtle AP1000 nuclear power plant construction project under a new service agreement.

The VC Summer nuclear construction project is now over 64% complete, South Carolina Electricity & Gas (SCG&E) said in its latest progress report to the state's Public Service Commission. The substantial completion dates for the two AP1000 units are currently unchanged from previous timelines but are to be re-evaluated in light of Westinghouse's recent bankruptcy filing.

Initial construction has been completed at the UAE's first power reactor, Barakah 1. The operating company, Nawah Energy Company, must gain approval from national regulators before the final stage of loading fuel and bringing it into service.

Testing of the hermetic enclosure system of the reactor containment building has started at unit 1 of the Leningrad Phase II nuclear power plant under construction in western Russia, the Rosatom subsidiary managing the project announced today. The work is one of the main stages of pre-commissioning a new reactor unit.

The owners of the VC Summer and Vogtle nuclear new-build projects have announced extensions to interim assessment agreements with Westinghouse. The extensions will allow work to continue at the AP1000 construction site at Summer until 26 June and Vogtle until 12 May.

The "30-day window which ends imminently" on the fate of Westinghouse's US nuclear power plant projects is "critical" to the national interest and to the interest of the industry as a whole, Dan Lipman of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) has told the World Nuclear Fuel Cycle (WNFC) conference in Toronto, Canada. Westinghouse said it would no longer spend money on the Summer and Vogtle projects, but reached an agreement with the utilities involved to allow them to pay costs during a 30-day interim period.

Russia's Zio-Podolsk has completed "one of the most complex" manufacturing operations on the reactor head of the Sibir nuclear-powered icebreaker, using a new tool that reduces the time required to bore holes in the structure from 150 days to 36 days. Sibir is the second of three vessels of the Project 22220 - featuring RITM-200 (Rhythmn-200) reactors - that will be able to break through ice 3 meters thick as they escort vessels across the Arctic Ocean. The others are Arktika and Ural.

Belarus and Russia have agreed to the delivery of the reactor pressure vessel originally built for the Baltic NPP - under construction in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad - to unit 2 of the nuclear power plant under construction in Ostrovets, in the Grodno region of Belarus, Rosatom has confirmed to World Nuclear News. The schedule for commissioning the Ostrovets 2 is uaffected and remains 2020.

Westinghouse Electric Company has informed South Carolina Electric & Gas that it estimates the additional cost of completing the two VC Summer AP1000 reactors to be about $1.5 billion.

Rosenergoatom has started cold and hot function testing at unit 1 of the Leningrad Phase II nuclear power plant under construction in western Russia. The procedure at the VVER-1200 unit will take 72 days to complete and will include more than 100 pre-operational tests of reactor equipment and systems, the Rosatom subsidiary said yesterday.