RRFM 2009 Transactions - European Nuclear Society

In 2008, methodological improvements have been undertaken by FRM II and CEA teams at
the tandem accelerator of the Maier-Leibnitz Laboratorium at Garching (Germany). Indeed,
up to now, the studies of this type of fuel by heavy ions irradiation were mainly focused on
the effects induced by a maximization of the burn-up. In this work, we have chosen to test
different irradiation parameters (incident angle of the ion beam, flux and integral ion fluence)
and to define their influence on the IL in term of morphology, thickness and composition
thanks to a set of accurate and non-destructive characterizations using microscopy and X-
ray diffraction (XRD) techniques.
2. Experimental method
2.1. Fuel plate processing and characterizations
The samples had been prepared from fuel miniplates provided by AREVA-CERCA
which consist of atomized UMo7 (U-7wt%Mo) particles inside an aluminium matrix. The
sample size, after the cutting and polishing processes were 8 x 8 x 0.3 mm 3 .
Fresh fuels and heavy ion irradiated samples were studies at the ‘Laboratoire UO 2 ’ in
Cadarache (France). Microscopy was performed using a FEG-SEM-Philips XL30 coupled
with an Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectrometer (EDS) and XRD measurements were
obtained using a diffractometer D8 Advance Brüker. µ-XRD analyses using synchrotron
radiation in reflection mode on the ID22 beamline at ESRF (European Synchrotron Radiation
Facility) in Grenoble (France) have completed the data. The photon energy was set to 17
keV and the size of the beam spot was in the order of 1 x 20 µm 2 . To fulfil safety
requirements samples were conditioned under Kapton tape.
2.2. Heavy ion irradiation
At the 14 MV tandem accelerator of the Maier-Leibnitz Laboratorium heavy ion
irradiations were carried out under high vacuum (