Abstract. We introduce and study procedures and constructions of the theory of general topological radicals that are related to the spectral theorythe centralization, primitivity and socle procedures, the scattered radical, the radicals related to the continuity of the usual, joint and tensor radii. Among other applications we find some sufficient conditions of continuity of the spectrum and spectral radii of different types, and in particular prove that in a GCR C*-algebra the joint spectral radius is continuous on precompact sets and coincides with the Berger-Wang radius.