Framatome opens additive manufacturing center in France for nuclear and defense sectors

Framatome has inaugurated a dedicated additive manufacturing center in Romans-sur-Isère, France, operational since May 2026. The facility produces metal mechanical components for nuclear energy, defense, and industrial partners using two processes: fused filament fabrication (FFF) and laser powder bed fusion (LPBF). Parts range from a few kilograms to several tons, with dimensions from millimeters up to five meters. The center, named after Vice Admiral Bernard-Antoine Morio de Lisle, integrates production, R&D, process qualification, and training, and currently employs about 20 staff. CEO Grégoire Poncet stated the center is a strategic asset to strengthen industrial autonomy, secure critical supply chains, and accelerate innovation for nuclear and defense performance and safety.

This move places Framatome within a small but growing cohort of nuclear-energy incumbents investing in AM production capacity, alongside Rosatom’s fuel division (partnering with Petrovietnam for a Vietnamese AM center) and AMPERA’s full-scale 3D-printed reactor module in Florida. The nuclear vertical has historically been a slow adopter of AM due to extreme qualification requirements, but Framatome’s dual-use focus on defense and nuclear mirrors the broader 2025–2026 political acceleration of AM in defense supply chains. The center’s ability to produce parts up to five meters long via FFF and high-precision LPBF components positions it as a hybrid-capability facility, addressing both large-scale tooling and complex, qualified serial parts. The emphasis on in-house process certification and training suggests Framatome is building the materials qualification discipline and qualification infrastructure that is often the real bottleneck in regulated industries, rather than simply acquiring machine capacity.

For the nuclear and defense sectors, the practical significance is that a major OEM has committed to internalizing AM production rather than relying solely on external service bureaus. This reduces qualification risk and lead times for safety-critical components. The key execution challenge will be moving from demonstration parts to program-embedded production, where the part becomes invisible infrastructure rather than a headline. Framatome’s success will depend on how quickly it can integrate this center into existing nuclear and defense supply chains and achieve the repeatable factory output that the AMPulse framework identifies as the true frontier for metal AM.