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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2011
The impact of Nd2O3, MoO3 and RuO2 addition on the competition between the crystallization of apatite Ca2Nd8(SiO4)6O2 and powellite CaMoO4 phases which both may appear in High Level Waste nuclear glass (under certain specific conditions of cooling and glass composition) has been studied on a simplified composition belonging to the system SiO2-Na2O-CaO-Al2O3-B2O3. X-ray diffraction (at room temperature and high temperature) and scanning electron microscopy measurements have been performed on five glasses under two different thermal treatments. We show that RuO2 acts as a nucleating agent for apatite. Moreover, neodymium and molybdenum cations seem to be very close in the glassy network as Nd2O3 addition stops the phase separation of molybdates and inhibits the crystallization of CaMoO4. On the contrary, MoO3 seems to favor the crystallization of apatite. For several samples, the evolution of the distribution of Nd3+ cations after crystallization was followed by optical absorption spectroscopy.