UMo/Al nuclear fuel quantitative analysis via high energy X-ray diffraction

摘要

Being able to quantitatively characterise the crystalline phases of low enriched UMo/Al nuclear fuels could significantly contribute to their development. It is shown that results provided by the Rietveld analysis of data collected at 8keV in reflection geometry are strongly affected by absorption effect, the weight ratio between UMo particles and the Al matrix obtained in these conditions being found to disagree with those expected from com plementary analyses such as SEM or manufacturing data. To overcome this difficulty, high energy X-ray Diffraction (XRD) measurements at 87keV have been performed leading to an accurate and quantitative description of the phase content in the whole volume of the sample, avoiding absorption effect in the bulk.