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The International Atomic ¶¶Òõ´«Ã½ÔÚÏß Agency last week held a symbolic ground-breaking ceremony to mark the start of the Renovation of the Nuclear Applications Laboratories (ReNuAL) project at Seibersdorf, near Vienna.

A nuclear risk research centre has been established in Japan to carry out research and development necessary for utilities to improve safety on their own initiative.

Research by a team led by Jae W Kwon at the University of Missouri in the USA has opened the door for the development of a new generation of water-based batteries powered by beta radiation. The technology could potentially beÌýdeployed in applications ranging from car batteries to spacecraft.

Japan has selected three overseas companies to construct demonstration projects to verify the suitability of their technologies for removing tritium from contaminated water at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Areva has presented Azerbaijan government officials with its proposals to construct a nuclear research reactor in the Central Asian country.

Russian power engineering R&D institute NIKIET has completed the engineering design for the BREST-300 lead-cooled fast reactor.

Japan's Hitachi has begun further joint research with three US universities into the development of reactors that could use transuranic (TRU) elements as fuel. This could result in a significant decrease in the time needed for the decay in the radioactivity of used fuel.

South Korean designers have secured help from Argonne National Laboratory to develop an advanced reactor, which is partly based on America's successful EBR-II prototype. A 150 MWe sodium-cooled demonstration unit is slated for 2028.

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. DecommissioningÌýactivities will begin in about three years.

A demonstration high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) could be constructed in Indonesia following the signing of a cooperation agreement between Japan and Indonesia on developing such reactors.

AÌýnew remote-handled low-level wasteÌýdisposal facility should be in operation at the Idaho National Laboratory by October 2017. A $34 million contract for the facility's design and construction has now been awarded.