Uranium–molybdenum nuclear fuel plates behaviour under heavy ion irradiation: An X-ray diffraction analysis
Résumé
Heavy ion irradiation has been proposed for discriminating UMo/Al specimens which are good candidates
for research reactor fuels. Two UMo/Al dispersed fuels (U–7 wt percent Mo/Al and U–10 wt percent Mo/Al) have been
irradiated with a 80 MeV 127I beam up to an ion fluence of 2 1017 cm2. Microscopy and mainly Xray
diffraction using large and micrometer sized beams have enabled to characterize the grown interaction
layer: UAl3 appears to be the only produced crystallized phase. The presence of an amorphous additional
phase can however not be excluded. These results are in good agreement with characterizations
performed on in-pile irradiated fuels and encourage new studies with heavy ion irradiation.