Decontamination of a gas-cooler by means of chemical reagent loaded foams

This paper briefly describes an industrial application of the foam decontamination process applied to large volume components. The process is based on the filling of the component with liquid foam containing suitable chemical reagents, and a circulation loop enables its continuous recycling. The process was successfully validated during the decontamination of a graphite gas-cooler representing a developed area of 1000 m2. A decontamination factor up to 190 was obtained leading to a residual activity below 1 Bq/cm2. The process only produced 6 m3 of effluent i.e. about ten times less than for a chemical solution technique. (authors)