France-based nuclear start-up Naarea (Nuclear Abundant Affordable Resourceful Energy for All) has signed a strategic partnership agreement with Italian startup Fluid Wire Robotics (FWR). The aim is to provide Naarea with safe and reliable robotic handling capabilities for its fuel production facility, as well as for its XAMR microreactors, in particular during maintenance operations or dismantling.
Naarea, founded in 2020 by Jean-Luc Alexandre and Ivan Gavriloff, is developing the XAMR (eXtrasmall Advanced Modular Reactor) (40MWe or 80MWt). The XAMR design is for a molten salt fast neutron micro-generator capable of producing electricity and heat from long-lived used fuel waste produced by current conventional reactors.
The microreactor is intended for installation in close proximity to electro-intensive industrial sites, and will remain under Naarea’s ownership to ensure the installation’s safety, security and proper maintenance at all times. Naarea says maintenance and dismantling of these systems after decommissioning require complex handling under challenging conditions (high temperatures, radiation and potentially in pools).
FWR’s technology, based on a proprietary hydrostatic transmission system represents a major asset for Naarea in this context. FWR is a spin-off from the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Pisa), founded in 2024 by Marco Bolignari, Marco Fontana, Ivan De Leonardis, Gianluigi Grandesso, and Francesco Damiani. The company’s mission is to enable remote and unmanned inspection, maintenance, repair, and assembly in the world’s most extreme and unstructured environments.
FWR’s innovation is its proprietary Fluid Wire technology, which relocates all actuation and electronics to a remote Actuation Box. This enables the development of fully electric robotic manipulators that are inherently suited for operation in radiation, vacuum, underwater, explosive, and high-temperature conditions, while remaining accessible in terms of cost, deployment, and maintenance. FWR is recognised as a NATO DIANA Innovator under the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) programme and also receives support from the European Space Agency (ESA).
In particular, FWR’s technology enables:
- The implementation of actuators or robotic arms with six degrees of freedom without built-in electronics in a nuclear zone, with motors and sensors housed in a remote shieldable actuation unit;
- The manipulation of objects with great precision, with force feedback and a high level of manoeuvrability;
- Work in “remote operation” mode and “production” mode, using repetitive sequences programmed and validated in advance.
Collaboration with FWR will enable Naarea to:
- Make use of precision actuators with force feedback, capable of surviving hostile environments;
- Inspect and maintain its microreactors using robotics (in maintenance facilities or on the operation site);
- Automate certain key steps of the fuel production process (in particular the handling of reprocessed fuel);
- Carry out robot-assisted dismantling operations, including in pools; and
- Optimise/automate and safely carry out certain activities in laboratories and production sites.
Naarea says that by partnering with Fluid Wire Robotics, it “is taking a key step forward towards the industrialisation of next-generation nuclear technology”.
