A demonstration test of a process to decontaminate radioactive soil was successfully carried out last November in Japan's Fukushima Prefecture, France's Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission announced on 11 April. The technology was developed by CEA, Orano and Veolia.

Unmanned aerial system technology is being developed to fly into the containment vessels of the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan to assess their condition. Tokyo Electric Power Company contracted the Southwest Research Institute of the USA to carry out the work.

A pair of autonomous robots, developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute to characterise uranium deposits in process pipes, could save tens of millions of dollars in decommissioning costs at the USA's former gaseous diffusion enrichment plants.

Countries have made preparations for responding to nuclear and radiological emergencies, but too little has been done to prepare for the lifting of those emergencies, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It has now published a guide providing advice on the transition to a normal state following an emergency.

A new process for the chemical decontamination of the reactor cooling system and subsystems in nuclear power plants has been developed by Germany's Siempelkamp NIS Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH. The procedure - which took four years to develop - has been successfully demonstrated in a German nuclear power plant.

A small drone is to be deployed to measure radiation levels at the damaged reactors at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The UK-developed RISER - Remote Intelligence Survey Equipment for Radiation - has already been used successfully at Sellafield, in England.

The US House of Representatives - the lower chamber of Congress - has approved two bills related to nuclear energy research and development. The bills - one for a versatile reactor-based fast neutron source and the other for research into the effects of low-dose radiation - will now pass to the Senate before they can be signed into law by the President.

Shine Medical Technologies has completed construction and taken occupancy of Building One at its medical isotope production facility in Janesville, Wisconsin. Construction of the main production facility is to begin soon.

JSC Isotope is to supply isotope products to Brazil under a five-year agreement signed with the National Nuclear Energy Commission (CNEN). According to the agreement, which is in addition to Russia's current weekly supplies to Brazil of molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) and iodine-131, JSC Isotope will supply lutetium-177, yttrium-90, cobalt-57, and sources of ionizing radiation based on iridium-192 and germanium-68/gallium-68 generators.

An anti-nuclear activist in the 1970s was afraid of tyranny. An anti-nuclear activist now is afraid of radiation. But tyranny didn't happen and the effects of radiation are misunderstood. The threat of climate change IS real and, to fight it, we need nuclear power, writes Scott L. Montgomery.

Russia's Rosatom and the French radioactive waste management agency Andra yesterday signed a cooperation agreement concerning the final isolation of radioactive waste. The agreement builds on a memorandum of understanding the two parties signed in 2012.

Harmonising the training of contractors to access multiple nuclear facilities in the USA is one example of ensuring safety amid pressures on the industry to cut costs and remain competitive, Peter Prozesky, CEO of the World Association of Nuclear Operators, told World Nuclear News in a recent interview. This approach is one answer to the industry's need to align its procedures, as outlined in World Nuclear Association’s Harmony initiative, he added.