Decontamination and Collection of Radioactive Material

One of the most challenging aspects of responding to an incident like that at Fukushima is decontaminating the environment to a sufficient extent that human activities can resume. At Fukushima, widespread cesium contamination persists in the soil, plants, and urban areas surrounding the plant; at the plant itself, water also is contaminated. This variety of contaminated material complicates the decontamination approach. However, broadly speaking, there are three approaches to decontamination: physical decontamination—including removing superficial or airborne radionuclides by applying direct mechanical force and/or using flowing water or air chemical decontamination—which takes advantage of atomic-level interactions to concentrate radionuclides