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D&D
THE UK’S SELLAFIELD Ltd (a subsidiary of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority) and Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) have extended by up to 10 years their agreement to cooperate in the field of nuclear decommissioning. The agreement enables the exchange of operational and technical knowledge to support decommissioning progress at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi site and the UK’s Sellafield site.
BY 2028, ROSATOM plans to complete the decommissioning of the long-term storage facility for radioactive waste at the Ural Electrochemical Combine (UEKhK) in Novouralsk, Sverdlovsk region. This long-term storage facility for radioactive waste was operated by the plant from 1951 to 1964. Work to eliminate it began in 2022. To date, about half of the radioactive waste has been removed and UEKhK is processing it independently.
ADVANCED REACTORS THE FIRST PRE-licensing project for a small modular reactor (SMR) was launched during the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA’s) 69th General Conference in Vienna. The project focuses on the EAGLES-300 SMR design, based on Generation IV lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR) technology, which targets delivery of its first demonstrator by 2035 and development the EAGLES-300 SMR by 2039.
SMRs CANADIAN CONSTRUCTION AND infrastructure development company Aecon Group has signed a teaming agreement with Estonia’s Fermi Energia to advance cooperation on the development and deployment of GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300 small modular reactor (SMR) technology in Estonia.
ONTARIO POWER GENERATION (OPG) said work has continued on the commercial, grid-scale small modular reactor (SMR) under construction at Darlington New Nuclear Project (DNNP). In June, Candu Energy, part of Canada’s AtkinsRéalis, was awarded a CAD450m ($327m) execution contract by OPG, for the first of four planned SMR units at DNNP.
SWITERLAND-BASED ABB and Swedish nuclear energy company Blykalla have signed a memorandum of understanding to support and accelerate the deployment of small modular lead-cooled reactors to the maritime industry. The new agreement expands the partnership in the context of the growing momentum for nuclear energy as a marine power source.
SMRs and AMRs to fusion, within the
framework of technological neutrality and the European energy transition. Sustainable nuclear power is a choice based on innovation, safety, and responsibility toward citizens, businesses, and the environment.” However, before the government can move
to implement the bill, it must first become law. It will need to be approved by the relevant parliamentary committees, followed by the chamber including any amendments and finally the same text must be accepted by both houses, the House and the Senate. Only then can the government begin to legislate. In May 2023, the Italian Parliament approved a motion urging the government to consider incorporating nuclear power into the country’s energy mix. The following September, the first meeting was held of the National Platform for Sustainable Nuclear Power, set up by the government to define a time frame for the possible resumption of nuclear energy and identify opportunities for the industrial chain already operating in the sector. In March, the government approved a
proposal to draft laws to permit nuclear power generation, focusing on SMRs. The government aims to finalise plans and legislation by the end of 2027, in order to supplement renewable energy sources. Italy’s National Integrated Plan for Energy
& Climate already includes scenarios in which nuclear power provides between 11% and 22% of Italy’s electricity by 2050. The government plans to allocate €20m ($20.7m) a year from 2027 to 2029 for nuclear investments.
France
Newcleo and JAEA in testing deal France-based nuclear start-up newcleo and the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) have signed a collaboration agreement to test key structural and reactor core materials for newcleo’s planned lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR) technology. The partnership will leverage the expertise
and experience of JAEA, making use of Joyo, a sodium-cooled fast reactor located in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. Using Joyo, newcleo and JAEA will conduct irradiation tests and post- irradiation examinations, supporting newcleo’s long-term nuclear fuel manufacturing strategy. This agreement marks an important step in
newcleo’s licensing and development roadmap. Access to real-world irradiation environments will provide critical data on core and structural materials performance under the specific characteristics of fast reactors. The results will support the deployment of newcleo’s LFR-AS-30 reactor and fuel manufacturing pilot line, the designs of which are currently in the licensing process in France. The collaboration will also complement
ongoing R&D activities at the ENEA Brasimone Research Centre (Bologna, Italy), where newcleo is testing material resistance to corrosion and erosion in lead-cooled systems.
14 | October 2025 |
www.neimagazine.com newcleo CEO Stefano Buono said: “Testing
materials in an operational fast reactor is a unique opportunity that will provide us with invaluable data for the development and licensing of our LFRs, and for advancing next generation nuclear technology in general.” JAEA President Masanori Koguchi said:
“Through our collaboration, we hope to advance research and development in fast reactors and play a part in building a more sustainable society”.
United States Atomic Canyon partners INL on AI California-based startup Atomic Canyon has formed a strategic partnership with the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to further develop AI (artificial intelligence) for the nuclear industry. The partnership will establish critical standards for AI adoption in nuclear operations. This will address an industry need for objective evaluation methods for generative AI systems. The aim is to publicly release the first comprehensive benchmark suite for evaluating retrieval-augmented generation and large language models in nuclear applications. Nuclear facilities and national laboratories
store decades of operating logs, maintenance records, and engineering drawings, much of it in scanned PDFs or proprietary repositories. The new benchmark suite will enable nuclear operators to evaluate AI systems that can access public nuclear documentation through retrieval- augmented generation techniques. The benchmark suite aims to address a fundamental challenge in nuclear AI deployment: evaluating systems that must work with both public nuclear documentation and facility-specific technical data. Existing AI evaluation benchmarks are insufficient to meet the nuclear sector’s unique requirements for safety, regulatory compliance, and security. Over six months, the project will curate
datasets, define benchmark tasks and evaluation metrics, and produce comprehensive documentation, including a technical summary, for community distribution via open-source repositories. All data, definitions, and criteria will be released under open-source public licenses, ensuring the nuclear and AI communities can benefit. Atomic Canyon will release the accompanying software and tools under permissive open-source licences. INL will contribute its unique nuclear
subject-matter expertise and access to curated public datasets. The benchmark tasks will focus on real-world nuclear workflows, including document retrieval, regulatory compliance checks, and answering technical questions. Christopher Ritter, Division Director of Scientific Computing & AI and Director of INL’s Digital Innovation Center of Excellence (DICE) said: “By creating standardised evaluation methods, we’re enabling the industry to confidently adopt AI technologies that can accelerate nuclear energy deployment.” ■
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