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Framatome

Framatome

🇫🇷 Courbevoie, FR · Active

Framatome is a French nuclear engineering company headquartered in Courbevoie, near Paris. It was formed in 1958 to license Westinghouse's pressurised water reactor designs for France, later became Areva NP, and took back the Framatome name in 2018 after a major investment by EDF. According to Wikipedia, EDF owns 80.5% and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries 19.5%. Framatome designs reactors, including the EPR, a large pressurised water reactor built at Olkiluoto 3 in Finland, and supplies nuclear fuel, components, instrumentation and control systems and services across a reactor's life.

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Sector
Fission, Fuel cycle
Technology
Pressurised water reactor
Fuel
Low-enriched uranium, Mixed oxide fuel
Role
Reactor developer, Supplier

Terms

Pressurised water reactor
Ordinary (light) water kept under high pressure so it heats without boiling, transferring heat to a separate steam loop; the water is both coolant and moderator. Fuel is low-enriched uranium oxide pellets in zirconium-alloy rods. The most common reactor type in service worldwide.
Low-enriched uranium
Uranium enriched to 5% uranium-235 or less, typically 3 to 5%: the range almost all power reactors use. Formally, anything below 20% is low-enriched; this site holds the band from 5% to just under 20% separately as HALEU, with its 5 to 10% part also tagged as LEU+. A fuel above 5% uranium-235 belongs in one of those, never here, whatever a developer's own materials call it.
Mixed oxide fuel
Mixed oxide fuel: plutonium oxide blended with uranium oxide, usually depleted uranium, with commercial MOX typically 7 to 11% plutonium. The plutonium comes from reprocessed spent fuel, so MOX needs no fresh enrichment but depends on a reprocessing plant. Plutonium gives a smaller delayed neutron fraction than uranium-235, one reason thermal reactors usually load MOX into only part of their core.

Designs

Design Developer Approach Electrical output per unit Size class Licensing stage
EPR European Pressurised Reactor, Evolutionary Power Reactor Framatome Pressurised water reactor Output not stated Not classed No milestone recorded

Related companies

Sources