Decontamination of Stainless Steel

Abstract

Thermal desorption spectroscopy was investigated as a means of measuring the tritium content and the nature of tritiated adsorbed species on stainless steel surfaces. Thermal desorption spectroscopy has been used to determine the effect of a helium glow discharge on a tritiated, 316 SS, surface. HTO proved to be the main desorption species. Glow discharge cleaning has been observed to reduce the amount of sorbed tritium by a factor of ≥ 250.