Radioactive Decontamination in Lab

Q. What do you recommend for radioactive decontamination of stainless steel, glassware and lab equipment? We are a nuclear energy facility laboratory setting.

A.  We would recommend Alconox® Powdered Precision Cleaner or Detonox® Ultimate Precision Cleaner in water for manual, soak or ultrasonic cleaning.  It can be used for radioactive decontamination of stainless steel, glassware, labware, and the like. The phosphates and chelating agents combined with the wetting agents in Alconox or Detonox detergent are known to be effective at radioactive decontamination, including radioactive tracers based on Technetium, Carbon-14, Iodine and others.

We recommend use of a warm (if practical, otherwise ambient temperature solutions, it would just take longer) 1-2% (10-20 g/L or 1.25 – 2.5 oz/gal) solution of Alconox or Detonox detergent in water for manual cleaning.

Do not use any kind of high pressure spray or automated cleaning equipment as Alconox powdered detergent and Detonox liquid detergent are high foaming. Note that Alconox and Detonox detergent will bind with inorganic radioisotopes and will inhibit separation and waste treatment of the spent cleaning solutions by ion exchange columns. It is better to treat spent cleaning solutions by evaporation than by ion exchange. Sometimes it is necessary to use an anti-foamer in the evaporator depending on the evaporator design and the volume of solution being treated with what other types of waste streams if any.

For applications where a low foaming detergent is required (automated, high pressure cleaning applications) we recommend using 1% Alcojet® Low Foaming Powdered Detergent or 1% Solujet® Low-Foaming Phosphate-Free Liquid ambient temperature solutions, followed by thorough rinsing, can successfully perform decontamination.

To request these or any Alconox, LLC detergents for free, please complete the questionnaire at Get Sample.  For more information about any one of our Alconox, LLC detergents, consult the technical bulletin for each product. Or click here to access each of our detergent’s  Safety Data Sheets.

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Contact us any time: cleaning@alconox.com