Coupling of microanalytical techniques to study the relationships between chemical durability and irradiation resistance of alumino-borosilicate glasses

Abstract Safety assessment of a nuclear waste deposit is based on the chemical durability and irradiation resistance of the nuclear waste forms. It is well-known that the consequences of the impact of α, β and γ irradiation on glass integrity essentially affect the level of its recrystallized fraction and its initial dissolution rate. Complex alkali–borosilico-aluminate glasses were submitted to aqueous leaching tests at temperature ranging from 25 to 100 °C, from pH = 0 to pH = 12. Simple glasses containing one or two transition metal oxides have been synthesized. Some of them have been irradiated before being leached at 90 °C. Irradiation experiments have been performed with 150 keV Xe + ions mainly producing displacement cascades in the first hundreds of nanometers beneath the sample surfaces. The leached samples were then characterized by coupling performance techniques such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), electron microprobe analysis (EMA), secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) and ion beam analytical (IBA) methods: Rutherford backscattering and elastic recoil spectrometries (RBS and ERDA).