Self-healing capacity of nuclear glass observed by NMR spectroscopy

Safe management by vitrification of high level nuclear waste is a worldwide significant issue selected by many countries. There exists a crucial need for improving our understanding of the ageing of the glass under irradiation. While external irradiation by ions provides a rapid simulation of damage induced by alpha decays, short lived actinide doping is more representative of reality. Here, we report radiological high-resolution NMR experiments to compare the damage in International Simplified Glass (ISG) when irradiated by these two methods. In the 0.1% mol 244Cm doped glass, accumulation of high alpha decay only shows small modifications of the local structure, in sharp contrast to that those induced by heavy ion irradiation. These results reveal the ability of the alpha particle to partially recover the damage generated by the heavy recoil nuclei highlighting the radiation resistance of nuclear glass and the difficulty to accurately simulate its behaviour by single ion beam irradiations.

CHARPENTIER Thibault;  MARTEL Laura;  MIR Anamul H.;  SOMERS Joseph;  JEGOU C.;  PEUGET S.; 

2016-06-17

NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP

JRC98460

2045-2322,   

http://www.nature.com/articles/srep25499,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC98460,   

10.1038/srep25499,