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Innovative nuclear energy company Newcleo has inaugurated its EUR10 million (USD11 million) advanced nuclear fuel engineering, testing and training centre located in Chusclan, in the Gard department in southern France.
Announced in March 2025, the FASTER (Fuel process Assembly Storage Training and Enhanced Reality) facility provides advanced engineering, prototype testing and immersive training capabilities to Newcleo's fuel team, which comprises around 100 engineers and specialists. The facilities installed at FASTER - located near the Marcoule nuclear site - will support Newcleo's mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel manufacturing technology.
Paris-headquartered Newcleo said the centre is designed around a practical "test and learn" approach, bringing engineering and physical testing closer together. "Concepts developed by Newcleo's teams are translated into prototypes and test mock-ups at FASTER, tested under representative conditions and progressively refined, helping accelerate their path towards industrial deployment," it said.
Seven test facilities are already operational at FASTER, with further installations under development. These facilities address different stages and challenges of MOX fuel manufacturing, including powder dosing optimisation, glovebox ergonomics, pellet handling, fuel pin assembly and decontamination, pellet inspection and helium filling.
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(Image: Newcleo)
Newcleo aims to fabricate MOX nuclear fuel - produced using a mixture of uranium and plutonium oxides - to power its lead-cooled fast reactors and other potential third-party off-takers. When used in fast reactors, like Newcleo's lead-cooled fast reactor, MOX enables the multi-recycling of nuclear fuel in what is known as a "closed fuel cycle". This circular approach to nuclear fuel can extract more energy from the same amount of natural uranium compared with traditional once-through fuel cycles in thermal reactors, while at the same time significantly reducing the volume and radioactivity of nuclear waste.
"FASTER is an important milestone in the industrial execution of our fuel strategy," said Newcleo founder and CEO Stefano Buono. "By providing a dedicated environment to develop, test and qualify technologies before their deployment in licensed facilities, FASTER significantly de-risks our future MOX manufacturing programme and accelerates our path towards industrialisation in France and the United States. The centre is a testament to our development model: highly skilled teams, real equipment and industrial partners transforming research and engineering into the facilities we intend to build. By developing our fuel programme from within the established French nuclear industry, we are building capabilities to enable a closed nuclear fuel cycle and deploy the next generation of nuclear energy globally."
Newcleo plans to directly invest in a mixed uranium/plutonium oxide (MOX) plant to fuel its small modular lead-cooled fast reactors. The company has proposed the deployment of an advanced MOX fuel fabrication facility in France in the Aube department, near Nogent-sur-Seine, to manufacture fuel for its future European reactors. In December 2024, Newcleo submitted its Safety Options File to the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire et de Radioprotection (ASNR) for its planned mixed-oxide fuel assembly facility. The ASNR's official opinion on the submitted safety options will contribute to securing the application for authorisation to construct such a facility. In July this year, ASNR published its opinion on the safety features proposed by Newcleo for its planned facility, concluding that the provisions adopted by the company for its safety approach were satisfactory at this stage.
Designed as a modular facility, the MOX plant is expected to scale its production capacity as needed. The project would represent an initial investment of EUR1.8 billion (USD2.1 billion). It could ultimately include three production lines. The first line, scheduled for 2030, would involve up to 2,000 people during construction and generate 850 direct jobs. By 2040, an additional investment of EUR3.2 billion could enable the creation of two more lines, bringing the total number of direct jobs at the site to 1,700.
Newcleo's delivery roadmap sees the first non-nuclear precursor prototype of its lead-cooled fast neutron reactor being ready this year in Italy and the first reactor operational in France as early as 2032, while the final investment decision for the first commercial power plant is expected around 2029.