Application of HERFD and in-situ XAS to study oxide nuclear fuel and fission product behavior

Over the last decades, XAS has evolved as a very useful tool to investigate nuclear materials with applications for fuel manufacturing of for the behavior for fission products. Nowadays, the possibility of applying HERFD measurements to radioactive compounds offers even more possibilities. Two recent studies dealing with the behavior of fission gases in UO2 nuclear fuel and investigating both the electronic and structural properties of uranium based mixed oxide fuels will be presented to illustrate the use of HERFD. Furthermore, recent experimental developments allowing to perform in-situ XAS measurements on actinide-based materials at high temperature and under controlled atmosphere, will be illustrated by the first results obtained on UO2±x and (U,La)O2±x samples.