The new joint venture agreement for Advanced Fuel CANDU Reactor development is a clear step towards building new CANDU units, even if thorium takes a back seat to recycling uranium, writes Ian Hore-Lacy, Senior Research Analyst with the World Nuclear Association.

Energy Fuels has completed the transfer of the Piñon Ridge project, including the radioactive materials licence for a proposed uranium mill at the Colorado site, to a private investor group.

UPDATED Russia has agreed to build up to eight new nuclear power reactor units in Iran - four at Bushehr and four at another, yet to be determined site.

A consignment of irradiated experimental fast reactor fuel has returned to the Idaho National Laboratory in the USA from France for the final stages of a study that has been ongoing for over eight years.

Honeywell is preparing to restart the Metropolis uranium conversion plant after making enhancements to its procedures following its review of the 26 October incident involving an on-site release of materials at the Illinois site.

Industrias Nucleares do Brasil will provide enriched uranium for the first time for unit 1 of the country's sole nuclear power plant. Previously, the Resende plant was entirely engaged with foreign companies.

A year-long operation to remove all the used fuel assemblies from the storage pool at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi unit 4 has been successfully completed. Some fresh fuel remains in the pool, but this should be removed by the end of the year.

The long-delayed Rokkasho reprocessing plant, due to be completed last month, will now not begin operating until early 2016, Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited has announced.

Samples of novel metallic nuclear fuel designed by US-based company Lightbridge are to be fabricated and irradiation tested at Canada's Chalk River facilities under an initial cooperation agreement signed with Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL).

Honeywell's uranium conversion plant at Metropolis, Illinois suffered a leak late on 26 October which plant operators said was contained by prompt action and water sprays.

The US Department of Energy should consider disposing of the primarily defence-related high-level radioactive waste and used fuel that it manages separately from waste generated by the commercial nuclear energy industry, a report written on its behalf recommends.

Russia has completed testing of the TVS-5 fuel assembly containing mixed nitrides, the prototype fuel for the pilot demonstration reactor BREST-OD-300 that is to be built at the site of the Siberian Chemical Combine in Tomsk. Construction work is to start in 2016 and be completed in 2020.