Insights on fission products behaviour in nuclear severe accident conditions by X-ray absorption spectroscopy

Many research programs have been carried out aiming to understand the fission products behaviour during a Nuclear Severe Accident. Most of these programs used highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel, which requires complex instrumentation. Moreover, the radioactive character of samples hinders an accurate chemical characterisation. In order to overcome these difficulties, SIMFUEL stand out as an alternative to perform complementary tests. A sample made of UO₂ doped with 11 fission products was submitted to an annealing test up to 1973 K in reducing atmosphere. The sample was characterized before and after the annealing test using SEM-EDS and XAS at the MARS beam-line, SOLEIL Synchrotron. It was found that the overall behaviour of several fission products (such as Mo, Ba, Pd and Ru) was similar to that observed experimentally in irradiated fuels and consistent with thermodynamic estimations. The experimental approach presented in this work has allowed obtaining information on chemical phases evolution under nuclear severe accident conditions, that are yet difficult to obtain using irradiated nuclear fuel samples.