10. Contamination and Decontamination

Handling of radioisotopes often accompanies their transfer to handling equipment/tools and its environment, referred as contamination. If the transferred radioactivity is higher than regulation level, its removal or decontamination is required. Except very high energy radiation and neutron from radioisotopes, exposure to the radiation generally does not transfer the radioactivity, in other words, no activation of the handling tools and the environments occurs. Since tritium (T), a radioisotope of hydrogen, is chemically active, T handling always resulting in T contamination of handling tools and environments. Hence, direct T handling of workers is prohibited and handling tools are always required. This chapter focuses to contamination and decontamination of T for solid materials. T contamination of workers which is mostly caused by internal exposure through inhalation and/or skin absorption of tritiated water or vapor is described in Chap. 15 based on the details of safety regulation of T given in Chap. 14.