Comparison of Decontamination Standards

Abstract

The quality of materials used in nuclear-related facilities is critical, especially the ease of decontamination of different paints and coatings. Standards describe different testing methods for classification. Nevertheless, compliance with these standards cannot be carried out negligibly from a safety point of view. In this study, a withdrawn Hungarian (MSZ-05 22.7662-83), an international ISO (ISO 8690:1988), and Russian (GOST 25146-82) decontamination standard were compared. Four different paints were tested as part of this survey. The ease of decontamination varied mainly from poor to fair levels in the case of the Hungarian standard, while the ISO standard exhibited very good level. In the case of the Russian standard, only a theoretical comparison was carried out. Based on the results, it was found that a special epoxy-based coating can be recommended for isotope laboratories due to being the best material from an ease of decontamination point of view. From comparison of the standards considered here, it was found that the application of ISO standard is significantly faster and simpler than the withdrawn Hungarian standard. However, in the case of the Hungarian standard the data described the ease of decontamination in more details. The use of water or some other cleaning agents can be effective to remove 137Cs and 60Co contamination right after early identification. Isotope 137Cs and 60Co contamination of a surface can be cleaned quickly and effectively using distilled water for the 137Cs isotope removal from the surfaces being several times easier than that of 60Co.