Fundamentally, decontamination of equipment and facilities can have different objectives.

- Operational decontamination: to allow re-use of equipment (and thus, to enhance 
   efficiency/minimize consumption) or as pre-treatment to facilitate subsequent disposal of
   spent equipment/facilities
- Decontamination in the course of closure/decommissioning: to allow subsequent disposal
   of used equipment/facilities at the end of a project’s life-time

Thus, the big advantage of removing or reducing contamination is the opportunity for re-use of equipment as well as the achieved dramatic volume reduction: by preceding decontamination often only a small residual fraction, now containing the separated radionuclides, requires further treatment as NORM waste.

Various decontamination technologies for different applications are available. In the case of NORM-contaminated material suitable technologies can be:

- Manual preparation (e.g. brushing) - re-use: yes
- (High-pressure) water-jetting         - re-use: yesre-use: yes

- (Electro-) Chemical bath/rinsing     - re-use: possible/to be verified
- Abrasive blasting (e.g. by sand)     - re-use: no

Manual preparation and water-jetting are relatively mild and usually allow re-use of decontaminated equipment. 

By contrast, as chemical decontamination can employ reagents like phosphoric acid an opportunity for re-use needs to be verified. Abrasive blasting does usually not allow re-use due to the caused loss in material thickness. In general, all decontamination technologies can be conducted manually or are automated for higher capacity.

Though technologies like purification of contaminated solutions in the end also have the effect of decontamination, they usually are understood as waste treatment technologies.

If you have any specific question, feel free to contact us.