Study of iodine migration in zirconia using stable and radioactive ion implantation

Abstract The large uranium fission cross section leading to iodine and the behaviour of this element in the cladding tube during energy production and afterwards during waste storage is a crucial problem, especially for 129 I which is a very long half-life isotope ( T = 1.59 × 10 7 yr). Since a combined external and internal oxidation of the zircaloy cladding tube occurs during the reactor processing, iodine diffusion parameters in zirconia are needed. In order to obtain these data, stable iodine atoms were first introduced by ion implantation into zirconia with an energy of 200 keV and a dose equal to 8 × 10 15 at cm −2 . Diffusion profiles were measured using 3 MeV alpha-particle Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry at each step of the annealing procedure between 700°C and 900°C. In such experiments a reduced iodine concentration was observed, which correlated to a diffusion-like process. Similar analysis has been performed using radioactive 131 I implanted at a very low dose of 10 9 at cm −2 . In this case the iodine release is deduced from gamma-ray spectroscopy measurements. The results are discussed in this paper.