New nuclear glass-ceramics are extensively studied for the radioactive waste
confinement, due to the double confinement conferred by the glass-ceramics.
In this study, a glass-ceramic constituted by an aluminosilicate glass in the
system: SiO2-Al2O3-CaO-MgOZrO2-TiO2, containing 2wt.% of
Ca0.83Ce0.17ZrTi1.66Al0.34O7 zirconolite, has been synthesized by the
discontinuous method. Cerium, an actinide surrogate is introduced both in the
glass and ceramic phases. The synthesis is performed by a double melting at
1350?C, followed by a nucleation at 564?C, during 2 h, and a crystal growth
at 1010?C during 3 h. Then effect of Ca/Mg ratio on the distribution of the
crystalline network in the material was studied for Ca / Mg ratios ranging
from 0.4 to 5.5. For the whole of the materials, Archimedes density is about
2.80 g/cm3. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis shows that the increase of Ca/Mg
ratio leads to the increase of aluminosilicated crystalline phases with high
Ca contents; the materials molar volumes remaining constant. The zirconolite
phase is not affected by these additive aluminosilicated phases. The scanning
electron microscopy analysis (SEM) coupled with energy dispersive X-ray (EDX)
analysis confirmed these results; and shows the uniformity of distribution of
the ceramics in the bulk of the materials.
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