NuScale Power and the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are to collaborate on a techno-economic assessment, studying a NuScale small modular reactor's ability to implement a cost-effective steam heat augmentation design.

The 340-tonne reactor vessel could now be installed before the end of the year at the new unit being built by Rosatom at the Kursk nuclear power plant.

A ceremony has been held to mark the beginning of the installation - ahead of schedule - of the core catcher in the second unit at Egypt's El Dabaa nuclear power plant.

French construction company Eiffage, through its subsidiary Eiffage Génie Civil, has been awarded a contract worth more than EUR4 billion (USD4.4 billion) by EDF for civil engineering works on the first two EPR2 reactors planned at the Penly site in Normandy, northern France.

Swedish nuclear technical services provider Studsvik has signed a memorandum of understanding with Finnish utility Fortum to explore the conditions for new nuclear at the Studsvik industrial site near Nyköping in Sweden.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Nuclear Energy report, Made in Britain: The Pathway to a Nuclear Renaissance, says multiple small modular reactor units should be ordered to justify firms' investment in UK production facilities - and calls for Wylfa in North Wales to be backed within the next year as the next large-scale plant. 

The Philippines' largest electric distribution utility, the Manila Electric Company, has signed a cooperation agreement with Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation of the USA to study the potential deployment of one or more Micro-Modular Reactor Energy Systems in the Philippines.

Construction has started of the nuclear island for unit 1 at the Xudabao nuclear power plant in Liaoning Province, China National Nuclear Corporation announced.

The main construction period for the VVER-1200 unit will begin in 2025 after the go-ahead was given to begin the second stage of the construction project for what will be the seventh and eighth units at Leningrad nuclear power plants.

NuScale Power Corporation has announced the opening of the first privately-funded NuScale Energy Exploration Centre at Seoul National University in partnership with GS Energy Corporation, Doosan Enerbility and Samsung C&T Corporation.