A new centre for developing technologies for remote handling in extreme conditions has opened at the Culham Science Centre in the UK. A £15.6 million ($26.2 million) purpose-built facility is to be constructed at the site by 2016.

Operations have ended at a post-irradiation examination facility at the UK's Harwell nuclear research site. Decommissioning activities will begin in about three years.

Thales Group has secured a ten-year, £30 million ($51 million) contract to provide long-term support for computerised control systems at seven of EDF Energy's UK nuclear power plants.

The UK government has published its framework policy for the long-term management of higher activity radioactive waste, including details of how it intends to work with interested communities to site a geological disposal facility.

Spanish utility Iberdrola will work with GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy to develop a proposal to build a Prism integral fast reactor in the UK, but is yet to decide the scope of its involvement either as an engineer or operator of the potential plant.

Man has been sifting through trash for millennia, but the extraction of americium-241 waste from the UK's stockpile of civilian plutonium takes the exercise to a whole new dimension. Am-241 - a decay product of plutonium-241 - is the most prevalent isotope of americium in long-term stored plutonium and is currently considered to be waste.

The Czech government has expressed the common view of ten European countries in favour of nuclear power in a letter to the European Commission.

The UK is taking control of more of the foreign-owned separated plutonium it is storing, avoiding the cost and security measures associated with transporting the fuel back to other countries.

Sellafield Ltd is putting in place a new kind of long-term commercial mechanism to secure specialist decommissioning services over a ten-year period. The work could be worth up to £1.5 billion ($2.6 billion).

Toshiba has increased its commitment to building three AP1000 units at Moorside in the UK. It has taken an extra 10% in project company NuGen, while its option to buy the required land has been extended.

The removal of a 50-tonne concrete and steel plug has allowed access to the containment of the UK's prototype steam generating heavy water reactor (SGHWR) for the first time since it was built in the 1960s.