Destructive textures around radioactive minerals

In most of the rocks, natural uranium and thorium are concentrated in some minerals which provide favourable crystallographic sites. These minerals are thus submitted to an intense auto-irradiation which may transform them. Using conventional investigation methods (petrographic or scanning electronic microscopy, electronic micro-probe) and less conventional ones (transmission electronic microscopy), the authors studied the interfaces between radioactive minerals and their host minerals. They comment the possible mechanical and structural aspects of this interaction by irradiation, and the influence of geological events