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Poster presented on the irradiation work performed at the Dalton Cumbrian Facility in March 2022 investigating the effect of proton and gamma irradiation on cemented tungsten carbides (cWC) and reactive sintered borides (RSBs).

EBSD and TEM showed that significant changes to crystal quality occured post gamma and proton beam irradiation, particularly in the top 25 microns closest to the incident radiation.

This was confirmed by EBSD and TEM of the region between 10-20 microns within the sample surface.

The temperature at irradiation was observed to significantly impact the damage profile, particularly for gamma irradiation. Significant damage was observed within the top 25 microns of the sample post 90 kGy irradiation despite the relatively low fluence relative to 10 MGy ambient gamma ray dosage.

Further work is required to evaluate the full extent of damage and depth profiles for each irradiation.