Framatome and USNC To Cooperate On Manufacturing TRISO and FCM Fuel

Framatome (ENS Corporate Member) and Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) intend to form a joint venture to manufacture commercial quantities of Tri-structural Isotropic (TRISO) particles and Ultra Safe Nuclear’s proprietary Fully Ceramic Micro-encapsulated (FCM®) fuel.

Framatome and Ultra Safe Nuclear have signed a non-binding Heads of Terms Agreement to integrate their complementary resources through a joint venture to bring commercially viable, fourth-generation nuclear fuel to market for USNC’s Micro-Modular™ reactor (MMR®) and other advanced reactor designs.

Ultra Safe Nuclear’s collaboration with Framatome follows the opening of USNC’s Pilot Fuel Manufacturing (PFM) facility in August, the first and only privately funded facility in the U.S. to manufacture TRISO particles.

In addition, the facility’s engineers employ additive manufacturing – also known as ‘3D printing’ – to fabricate FCM fuel. The modular production lines for TRISO particles and FCM fuel, already demonstrated at scale at the PFM facility, are rapidly repeated to increase capacity to meet the growing demand for the MMR and advanced reactor technologies more broadly.

Read the full Framatome Press Release.

In June 2021, USNC started working also with NRG (Nuclear Research & Consultancy Group – ENS Corporate Member), which implements a program to analyze the performance and safety attributes of the FCM fuel designed for use in its Micro Modular Reactor (MMR).

Irradiation tests are conducted by NRG at its High Flux Reactor (HFR) in Petten, Netherlands.