Introducing a new Main Editor of JSR.

By combining HERFD-XAS at the uranium L₁-, L₃- and M₄-edge with relativistic quantum chemistry calculations the uranium valence electronic structure in KUO₃ could be assessed in detail. The contribution of uranium and oxygen states in observed spectral features is discussed.

Discussing JSR's forthcoming transition to open access.

Foreword to the virtual special issue of Journal of Synchrotron Radiation on Actinide Physics and Chemistry with Synchrotron Radiation.

A new Johann-type X-ray emission spectrometer recently installed at Rossendorf beamline of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility is described.

Two new routines for the refinement of uranium dispersion corrections from anomalous powder diffraction data, using either the intensity of some reflections or full-pattern Rietveld refinement, are reported. These methods advance the application of diffraction anomalous fine structure on uranium compounds, and open up new possibilities for the assessment of complex materials such as mixed-valence compounds.

Microradian X-ray diffraction shows that the porous structure of anodic alumina films possesses long-range orientational order and very extended longitudinal self-correlations, while the interpore positional order is rather short-range, not more than ∼10 interpore distances.

New experimental EXAFS results for PuO₂ and CeO₂ nanoparticles in the size range of 2 nm were compared with published data for other lanthanide and actinide dioxides. A conceptual core-shell model with a calculated effective coordination number is proposed to fit the changes in EXAFS.

ROBL-II at ESRF provides four experimental stations to investigate actinides with X-ray absorption and emission spectroscopy, and with surface, high-resolution powder, and single-crystal X-ray diffractometry.