Abstract

Decontamination technology has been increasingly important to reduce human radiation hazards and to minimize radioactive waste volume. Currently, chemical and electrochemical processes are applied for this purpose but production of large-volume secondary wastes (solvents), low process efficiency, and recontamination are serious problems. It is very attractive to introduce laser cleaning technique based on ablation process because the volume of secondary wastes can be significantly reduced. Potential for remote operation and surface modification ability is another attractive issue. In the last few years, experimental works have been conducted at several laboratories to demonstrate effectiveness of laser decontamination and some fundamental data have been reported.^1,2 We have investigated laser etching characteristics for the nuclear-reactor-simulated metal oxide films and demonstrated efficient removal of these films by applying the pulsed Nd:YAG laser ablation process.

© 1995 IEEE