The development of techniques like spin and dip coating, physical or chemical vapor deposition during the past decades offers now the opportunity for tailoring materials with numerous interfaces like multi layers or mesoporous materials. Glancing incidence X ray diffraction as well as the X ray reflectometry now offer the opportunity to probe the microstructure and the structure of materials at different depth, varying from few nanometers to few microns[1]. In this work, we firstly discuss the opportunity to use these techniques to follow the evolution of the microstructure and the structure as a function of the damage profile for new advanced nuclear materials. In the second part of this talk, we will point out the interest of the X ray reflectometry for studying ion beam mixing and then the stability of multi layers under irradiation. We lastly point out the interest of diffraction techniques to validate large scale simulations predicting the microstructural evolution of solids under irradiation [3].References:[1] D. Simeone, G. Baldinozzi, D. Gosset, G. Zalczer, and J. F. Berar. J. Appl. Crystallography, 44 :1205-1210, 2011[2] G. Baldinozzi, G. Muller, C. Laberty-Robert, D. Gosset, D. Simeone, and C. Sanchez. J. Phys. Chem.C, 116(14) :7658-7663, 2012.[3] D. Simeone, G. Demange, L. Luneville, Phys Rev E 88(3), 032116, 2013.