Uranium–molybdenum nuclear fuel plates behaviour under heavy ion irradiation: An X-ray diffraction analysis

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%Mo/Al and U–10 wt%Mo/Al) have been irradiated with a 80 MeV 127I beam up to an ion fluence of 2 × 1017 cm−2. Microscopy and mainly X-ray 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.