Novel Polyvinyl Alcohol Base Peelable Coating for Removal of Radioactive Contamination from Stainless Steel Surface

In this study, a new peelable polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) base coating was prepared by mixing PVA with modified starch and some other reagents. The properties of stability, film-forming and strippable ability of the coating were studied in detail. The decontamination performances of the coating for removing uranium contamination from the 304 steel plate surface were investigated by varying the temperature of film-forming, the pH value of uranium contamination, and the initial uranium concentration. Furthermore, the overall decontamination ability for several contaminations including uranium, cobalt and strontium by using the coating was tested. The results show that the coating exhibits good peelable and the removal rate of single uranium contamination and mixture contaminations are more than 90%. The excellent decontamination results for the hot chamber under the cooperation of tooling suggest that the peelable coating can be used in the decontamination of radioactive contaminations from metallic surface in hot cell or nuclear facilities.