In other news:

IN OTHER NEWS:

•

Kansai Electric Power Company has dropped plans to this month restart unit 3 at its Takahama nuclear power plant in Japan's Fukui Prefecture and operate it until August, the Fukui Shimbun reported. The utility said an investigation into the cause of thinning of the outer wall of tubing in two steam generators at the 870 MWe pressurised water reactor is ongoing. Construction of a back-up control centre at Takahama 3 continues, but Kansai has already stated it will miss the construction deadline of December.

•

China's National Nuclear Safety Authority on 13 April approved the environmental impact assessment for China Nuclear General's proposed construction of Phase I of the Sanao nuclear power plant in Zhejiang province, which will comprise two Hualong One reactors. The EIA will now be open to public consultation until 26 April, after which NNSA will finalise the documents.

•

A federal and provincial team led by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has completed its technical assessment of Canadian Nuclear Laboratories' revised draft environmental impact statement for its proposed Near Surface Disposal Facility. CNL must now respond to additional comments made by the review team before CNSC will decide if the application is complete. The proposed engineered disposal facility for low-level radioactive waste is planned for CNL's Chalk River Laboratories site in Ontario.

•

The US Department of Energy has announced plans to provide USD12 million over three years for research in quantum information science for fusion energy and plasma science. Funding is to be awarded competitively, based on peer review, in the form of three-year grants of USD50,000 to USD1 million per year, beginning in the current fiscal year.

•

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused no interruption of production operations at Ur Energy's Lost Creek in-situ leach uranium facility in Wyoming and had not as of early April interfered with scheduled delivery and sales into term contract commitments, the company said yesterday. A total of 4113 pounds of U3O8 (1.6 tU) were recovered in the Lost Creek plant and 1433 pounds U3O8 packaged in drums during the first quarter of this year.