Floor Covering in a Radioactive laboratory

Have you tried this?:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Floor+covering+for+a+Radioactive+laboratory

GA! I sphynx you're right.

Wouldn't the actual building structure contain the shielding materials in the floor and walls? The flooring and wall coverings just be decorative in nature?

I'd still assume the personnel of the dept. would have recommendations as to type of material they would prefer. But I wouldn't expect the flooring or wall coverings to be a major source of radiation shielding. Flooring and wall coverings are under constant wear and would therefore cause less and less shielding as they are used.

Naturally you wouldn't want a material that would absorb and hold the radiation but I doubt vinyl flooring would absorb much radiation except as dust particles caught in its surface.

1. Laboratory design for handling radioactive materials - Google Books Result
2. National Research Council (U.S.). Building ... - 1952 - Medical - 140 pages
   For the past year Argonne National Laboratory has been testing a sprayable rubber-asphalt mastic for floor coverings. Tests today indicate outstanding ...
   books.google.co.uk/books?id=T2UrAAAAYAAJ...
3. [PDF] Designing Radiochemical Laboratories - Guiding principles for ... File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
   Definition: Laboratories to be used for handling and storage of Open Sources of Radioactive ... The floor covering should be impervious and be PVC or linoleum with a ... used for storing radioactive materials must have a lock fitted. ...
   www.safety.ncl.ac.uk/uploads/GN12.pdf
4. Safety Office » Guides and Publications » EA Guidelines to ... Environment Agency Guidelines to Inspectors: Laboratory Design ... Floor coverings - should have minimum number of joins, full coving is recommended for .... 4.2 Security of keeping radioactive materials is essential and therefore doors .... be placed in sharps containers to ensure safe handling of the, materials. ...
   www.nottingham.ac.uk/.../RA_EA_GuidelinesLabDesign.htm
   www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=4911&page=79
5. Health physics practices in laboratories using <Superscript>3 ... by JD Berger - 1972
   laboratories handling radioactive materials should be separate from offices, lunch rooms ... A polyurethane floor covering has proved quite satisfactory. The polyurethane .... levels is not required in a laboratory handling ...
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floor covering in a laboratory handling radioactive material

So much for treated carefully by respondents... Lets just do a data dump and hope no one is harmed by our massive download of someone else's work product.

How much experience or education in this area do you bring to this post?

Why did you not bother to qualify the types and quantities and physical states of radioisotopes at this laboratory prior to responding?

Many cancer hospitals have poor floors not suitable for radioactive substance handling. Even drainages are not proper and there are incidences when old instruments having highly radioactive materials are scrapped like ordinary metals. There were deaths and injuries due to radioactivity from bad handling. Some careful assessment and planning is required.

Thanks for your comment. I wish every poster were as thoughtful.

Thanks for your effort. CR4 is a good family of wisdom despite several thoughtless posters among this otherwise useful database.

Is the floor on the ground ?

or is it above a room ?

Do you need to stop possible radiation penertrating the floor, If so about 1/4 " of lead sheet apllied to floor will stop most light radiation then a smooth easily cleaned surface should do.

This, surely, is a laboratory of handling radioactive substances, rather than a room for exposing sources with a significant amount of activity. We must be talking about microcuries. 10μCi of Co-60 would give about 0.1μSv/hr at 1 meter - about the same as natural background. ¼" of lead would only reduce this to about 0.07μSv/hr. The nuclides present (and hence the energy of the radiation) must be considered.

Significantly higher possible doserates would require that personnel wore protective clothing (as a minimum), and could mean that sources couldn't be exposed unless the room were fully shielded and interlocked so that exposure was not possible while the room was occupied.

If you need to question whether shielding is needed on the floor, you also need to check out the walls and ceiling. If you're going to cover the floor with lead, you also need to look at floor loading - 10' x 12' x ¼" of lead weighs about ¾ of a ton.

^{_{[Why do I think I'm wasting my time?]}}

Light radiation? Unbelievable.

Its terrible when you have to explain yourself to so called inteligent people

The shielding can also reduce the intensity, so if the radiation is low or lite to start with the lead will reduce it.

By light i was refering to all the other types other than x-ray or Gamma sorry i didnt allow for you lack of intelligence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray

Shielding

Shielding from gamma rays requires large amounts of mass. They are better absorbed by materials with high atomic numbers and high density, although neither effect is important compared to the total mass per area in the path of the gamma ray. For this reason, a lead shield is only modestly better (20-30%) as a gamma shield than an equal mass of another shielding material such as aluminium, concrete, or soil; the lead's major advantage is in its compactness.

The higher the energy of the gamma rays, the thicker the shielding required. Materials for shielding gamma rays are typically measured by the thickness required to reduce the intensity of the gamma rays by one half (the half value layer or HVL).

For example gamma rays that require 1 cm (0.4″) of lead to reduce their intensity by 50% will also have their intensity reduced in half by 4.1 cm of granite rock, 6 cm (2½″) of concrete, or 9 cm (3½″) of packed soil. However, the mass of this much concrete or soil is only 20–30% larger than that of this amount of lead. Depleted uranium is used for shielding in portable gamma ray sources, but again the savings in weight over lead is modest, and the main effect is to reduce shielding bulk.

http://www.hps.org/publicinformation/ate/faqs/radiationtypes.html

Hi,

Much information about radiation shielding. I don't think this be the real main problem.

What about surface decontamination? I believe this may be of importance if low dose rates are involved, but some of that radioactive materials can fall to the floor and then it must be necessary to decontaminate it (after checking rad levels by Rad Protection guys).

You can check for "decontaminable coatings".

Here is an example of painting suitable for floors.

vibak.com/englisch/Dokumente/Datenblaetter/dbe2042.pdf

Kind regards

Here in the Nuclear Power plant we use an epoxy paint.