Radioactive waste management is one of the major technical and scientific c
hallenge to be solved by industrialized countries near the beginning of the
21st century. Relevant questions arise about the extrapolation of the long
term-behavior of materials from waste package, engineered barriers and nea
r field repository. Whatever the strategical option might be, wet atmospher
e or water intrusion through the different barriers constitute the two main
remobilization factors for radionuclides in the geosphere and the biospher
e. The study of solid alteration processes and elemental sorption phenomena
on mineral surfaces is one of the most efficient basic research approaches
to assess the long term performance of waste materials. Ion beam analysis
and more recently nuclear microprobe techniques have been applied to invest
igate exchange mechanisms near representative solid/liquid interfaces such
as glass/deionized water, uranium dioxide/granitic or clay water or mineral
surface/aqueous solution doped with chemical elements analogue to actinide
or fission products. This paper intends to describe the different works th
at have been carried out in Saclay using the nuclear microprobe facility. T
he coupling of mu RBS, mu PIXE and mu NRA permits to determine the evolutio
n of the surface composition induced by chemical reactions involved. Comple
mentary observation of solid morphology and solution analysis allows to obt
ain a complete elemental balance on exchange processes. (C) 1999 Elsevier S
cience B.V. All rights reserved.