Speaker
Description
MARS (Multi-Analyses on Radioactive Samples) beamline at the SOLEIL synchrotron is opened to the international community since 2010 and is dedicated to the study of radioactive samples [1] with a specific radioprotection safety design that fulfills the French ASN (Autorité de Sureté Nucléaire) requirements. The beamline is fully devoted to advanced structural and chemical characterizations of radioactive matter, in particular actinides, using hard X-rays in the 3-35keV energy range. Today, the maximum radioactivity allowed on the beamline, including the storage, is 185 GBq with a maximum of 18.5 GBq per sample. Currently, different types of experiments are available: standard and high-resolution X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) [2,3], transmission X-ray diffraction (TXRD), high-resolution X-ray diffraction (HR-XRD) [4], and associated X-ray microbeam techniques (µXRF/µXRD/µXAS). Small angle and wide angle X-ray scattering (SAXS/WAXS) are also available.[5]
This contribution presents the status of the beamline and a selection of XAS studies on actinides related to the biological and environmental field.