Thursday, 2 July 2026

Belarus will design, build, and commission a radioactive waste disposal facility by the end of 2030, World Nuclear News reported. Regulators plan to run an environmental impact assessment and public consultations during 2026, including cross-border consultations with other countries.

Authorities have shortlisted three candidate sites. They are Ostrovets District, near the Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant, Mstislavl District in Mogilev Oblast, and Khoiniki District of Gomel Oblast.

The project follows the completion of the country's first nuclear station at Ostrovets. Its second unit entered commercial operation on November 1, 2023. The two units together supply about one-quarter of Belarusian electricity, which has created a domestic need to manage the waste those reactors produce.

The 2026 assessment and consultations come first. Site selection among the three districts has to close before construction can begin against the end-2030 commissioning deadline.

Deep Fission has brought in engineering firm Day & Zimmermann to run pre-construction planning and handle above-ground construction for its Gravity reactor.

The Gravity design places its reactor in a borehole one mile (1.6 km) below the surface, using pressurised water reactor technology and low-enriched uranium fuel. Each unit is rated at 15 MWe.

Work on the ground is already under way. Deep Fission broke ground in December at the Great Plains Industrial Park in Parsons, Kansas, for its pilot project.

The developer is part of the US Department of Energy's Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program, having been named in August last year as one of 10 companies picked for support. That program targets at least three designs reaching criticality by 4 July this year.

Deep Fission dates to 2023, when Elizabeth and Richard Muller founded it; the pair had earlier co-founded Deep Isolation in 2016.

NX Atomics moved on a different part of the supply chain, signing Sciaky, a division of Morphix Metals, to apply Sciaky's Electron Beam Additive Manufacturing process to components for the NX Atomics SMR platform.

Bruce Power's refurbished Unit 3 has returned to Ontario's electricity grid after the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) lifted the last of four regulatory hold points on the Candu reactor.

The reactor reached the grid at 1:34 a.m., Bruce Power said, adding that it will keep raising power and finish further testing and approvals before the unit can enter commercial operation.

The clearance came on June 2, when Ramzi Jammal, the CNSC's chief regulatory operations officer, told the company the regulator would remove the final hold point after staff confirmed it had met its commitments and stayed within its licence conditions.

Unit 3 went through a Major Component Replacement (MCR), which swaps out steam generators, pressure tubes, calandria tubes and feeder tubes and adds 30 to 35 years to a reactor's operating life.

Eight operable Candu reactors sit at the Bruce site, split evenly into two plants. Units 1 to 4 form Bruce A, and units 5 to 8 form Bruce B.

Bruce A units 1 and 2 came back into service in 2012 after refurbishment. Unit 4 began its own MCR in February 2025.

With Unit 3 synchronised, Bruce Power's next steps are power ascension and the testing needed to declare commercial operation.