Nuclear Energy News

Framatome Opens €30M Chromium-Coating Line for Accident-Tolerant Nuclear Fuel

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Framatome has inaugurated a new industrial facility at its Paimboeuf plant in western France to apply chromium coatings to nuclear fuel cladding tubes, the French reactor and fuel vendor said, as it moves its accident-tolerant fuel (ATF) technology toward commercial-scale production. The company put the investment at €30 million (about $33.5 million) and said the line can turn out more than 100,000 coated zirconium-alloy cladding tubes a year, a figure it described as adjustable as the technology matures.

What the coating does

The cladding tube is the thin metal casing that holds a reactor’s uranium fuel pellets and forms the first barrier containing radioactive material inside a fuel rod. At Paimboeuf, Framatome applies a chromium coating to zirconium-alloy cladding using physical vapor deposition, a process that deposits a thin, even metallic layer on the tube’s surface. According to the company, the coating improves the cladding’s resistance to oxidation and its mechanical performance at high temperatures, and cuts the amount of hydrogen the cladding generates if a reactor loses cooling. The product is part of Framatome’s “PROtect” line of enhanced accident-tolerant fuel, and the coated cladding can optionally be combined with a separate Framatome technology — chromium-oxide-enhanced uranium pellets — for a fuller ATF fuel rod.

A decade-long test program behind the plant

The Paimboeuf line is the industrial endpoint of testing Framatome has run since 2019, when it began irradiating early coated-cladding samples at the Gösgen plant in Switzerland and the Vogtle plant in Georgia, in the United States. The first full PROtect-E fuel assembly went into a reactor at the Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland in 2021. By 2024, Framatome said it had completed a third 18-month irradiation cycle of the fuel at Vogtle, and that a Gösgen assembly had become the first ATF design to pass 60 gigawatt-days per metric ton of uranium (GWd/tU) of burnup — a measure of how much energy the fuel has produced before it needs to be swapped out. Framatome is targeting industrial qualification of the coated cladding by the end of 2026, with production start-up planned for early 2027, pending that qualification being completed.

Part of a wider push since Fukushima

Framatome’s effort sits inside a broader, industry-wide push to make reactor fuel more resilient under loss-of-cooling conditions, a priority that gained urgency across the nuclear sector after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident in Japan. Framatome is one of several major fuel suppliers — alongside rivals including Westinghouse — pursuing different combinations of coated cladding and modified fuel pellets under the broader “accident-tolerant fuel” banner, with each vendor running its own irradiation and qualification programs with utility customers. Framatome said the Paimboeuf cladding is intended for pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuel assemblies supplied to both French and other international reactor operators, positioning the plant as a supply point for ATF adoption beyond France’s own fleet.

On the record

Lionel Gaiffe, senior executive vice president of Framatome’s fuel business unit, framed the facility as a step toward making the company’s accident-tolerant technology available at industrial scale, while Damien Cholet, the Paimboeuf site manager, said the plant builds on the site’s existing cladding manufacturing expertise. Neither executive’s remarks, as relayed by Framatome, included a specific customer order or contract tied to the new line; the capacity figures and timeline reflect the company’s own stated targets rather than confirmed external contracts.

Sources

World Nuclear News, “Framatome inaugurates chromium coating facility,” 30 October 2026 — https://world-nuclear-news.org/articles/framatome-inaugurates-chromium-coating-facility (facility location, investment figure, capacity, technology description, irradiation track record, qualification/production timeline, executive attributions)