The Lithuanian government, along with its partners in Estonia and Latvia, is in talks with Hitachi Ltd. to build a nuclear power plant in the country.

The Czech Republic is dropping plans to build as many as 18 new nuclear reactors and will instead expand its existing capacity, said Industry and Trade Minister Martin Kuba, according to the Czech newspaper Hospodarske Noviny.

Hit by protests, commissioning of the first unit of the Indo-Russian Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project has been further delayed by another two months to May next.

Polish utility PGE has shortlisted three locations for the building of the country’s first nuclear plant.

Public opinion has turned against nuclear power in nearly all countries that already have established atomic programmes, with the US and UK being the two exceptions, a poll has found.

A price tag of $30bn has been put on the United Arab Emirates’ nuclear programme, which it is developing with Korea Electric Power Corp.

French energy minister Eric Besson has said the closure of the France’s oldest nuclear power plant at Fessenheim would be “extremely prejudicial to the electric security” of the country.

The UK’s House of Lords has accused the government of complacency towards Britain’s nuclear research and development capabilities.

China has given the first public glimpse of a 1000 MW pressurised water nuclear power reactor which is said to have incorporated the technological lessons learned from the Fukushima accident.

Saudi Arabia has signed a nuclear power research and development agreement with South Korea.

Lithuania hopes to sign a deal with a Hitachi-GE joint venture by the end of 2012 to build a 1300 MW nuclear power plant.

The boss of German utility RWE has acknowledged that the company faces hard times ahead following the government’s decision to phase out nuclear power.

As the International Energy Agency today warned of the “alarming implications” of a significant shift away from nuclear power, a nuclear legal expert has said that “governments must commit to nuclear now”.

China, India and Russia will drive global energy growth in the next 25 years, any significant withdrawal from nuclear will have “alarming implications”, and a major cut in renewable energy subsidies because of economic austerity would make it “very difficult for the sector to come back to life", are among the conclusions from the latest IEA report.

Kansai Electric Power Company has submitted the results of a stress test conducted on No. 3 reactor at its Oi nuclear power plant in Oicho, Fukui Prefecture, to the Japanese government.

ndia’s state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) is planning to form a joint venture with Nuclear Power Corp of India to build new nuclear power plants.

Horizon Nuclear Power has completed the purchase of land in Wales where it hopes to build a new power station.

Two German companies behind nuclear new build plans in the UK are reported to have held talks with Toshiba and Areva over a cash injection worth €5bn ($7bn) in exchange for a 25 per cent stake in the plants.

US company Westinghouse Electric Co has won the contract to design a low and intermediate waste repository at Kozloduy nuclear power plant in Bulgaria.