Laser removal of loose uranium compound contamination from metal surfaces

A study on laser cleaning and pulsed gas tungsten arc welding of Ti–3Al–2.5V alloy tubes

“…This method has been used successfully by Lee and Watkins (2000) for cleaning copper surface. Nilaya et al (2006) and Roberts and Modise (2007) removed radioactive particulates from metallic surfaces by this technique using a pulsed CO 2 laser and Nd-YAG laser, respectively. Another way of removing particulate contaminants is by laser shock cleaning.…”

Experimental simulation of radioactive decontamination with Excimer laser

“…Moreover, it generates only a little second waste in hard phase during the dry process while the reduction of the total waste volume to be stored is one of the major concerns of nuclear decontamination. Several projects have been developed to estimate the advantages of laser cleaning for nuclear decontamination [3][4][5][6][7][8][9] . Recently, a prototype of laser cleaning was setup to estimate the efficiency for radioactive deposition layer removal on metal simulacrum in our laboratory.…”

Laser-assisted cleaning: Dominant role of surface

“…The conventional techniques used for the cleaning of the fuel element surfaces have a general disadvantage because of the possibility of exposure to personnel and generation of large volume of secondary radioactive waste. Pulsed laser-assisted removal of loose radioactive particulates from the surface of both metallic [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] and dielectric [4,6,7] substrates is gaining popularity as it has decided advantages over the conventional methods of cleaning. First, the volume of the secondary waste generated can be reduced to a significant extent here as an appropriate selection of the laser parameters such as its fluence and pulse duration can confine the interaction of the laser with the substrate to a restricted volume [3,4,8].…”