At the end of their life, polymers used in the nuclear industry are placed in Intermediate Level – Long Lived Waste packages. For safety purposes, the amount of gas emitted by these organic materials has to be estimated. γ irradiations are commonly used to simulate β and γ-emitters; α-emitters simulation are more problematic because of experimental difficulties. It is proposed in France to use particle accelerators with ions providing stopping power values in polymers equivalent to the one of α-emitters. This approach has been validated under inert atmosphere; the question now arises of the effect of the presence of oxygen. We showed that the hydrogen release is slightly affected by atmosphere of irradiation and increases with LET. The evolution with LET of CO₂ release is dependent on the polymer: it increases for polymers with low G(CO₂) at low LET and decreases for polymers presenting relatively high G(CO₂) at low LET.

核工业中使用的聚合物在使用寿命结束时被放置在“中级–长寿命废物”包装中。为了安全起见，必须估算这些有机材料排放的气体量。γ辐射通常用于模拟β和γ发射体。由于实验上的困难，α-发射极的仿真更加成问题。法国提出在粒子加速器中使用离子，该粒子加速器在与α发射体之一等效的聚合物中提供终止功率值。该方法已在惰性气氛下得到验证；现在提出了氧气存在的影响的问题。我们表明，氢气的释放受辐照气氛的影响很小，并且随着LET的增加而增加。LET of CO ₂的演变释放取决于聚合物：在低LET下具有低G（CO ₂）的聚合物会增加释放，而在低LET下具有相对高G（CO ₂）的聚合物会降低释放。