IATA Class 7 Surface Contaminated Objects (SCO)

A Surface Contaminated Object (SCO) is a solid object that is not itself radioactive but has radioactive material distributed on its surfaces. SCOs are classified as either SCO-I or SCO-II.

An SCO-I object has the following properties:

• The nonfixed contamination on the accessible surface averaged over 300 cm2 (or the area of the surface if less than 300 cm2) does not exceed 4 Bq/cm2 for beta and gamma and low toxicity alpha emitters, or 0.4 Bq/cm2 for all other alpha emitters.
• The fixed contamination on the accessible surface averaged over 300 cm2 does not exceed 40 kBq/cm2 for beta and gamma and low toxicity alpha emitters, or 4 kBq/cm2 for all other alpha emitters. The nonfixed contamination plus the fixed contamination on the inaccessible surface averaged over 300 cm2does not exceed 40 kBq/cm2 for beta and gamma and low toxicity alpha emitters, or 4 kBq/cm2 for all other alpha emitters.

An SCO-II object has the following properties:

• The nonfixed contamination on the accessible surface averaged over 300 cm2 does not exceed 400 Bq/cm2for beta and gamma and low toxicity alpha emitters, or 40 Bq/cm2 for all other alpha emitters.
• The fixed contamination on the accessible surface averaged over 300 cm2 does not exceed 800 kBq/cm2 for beta and gamma and low toxicity alpha emitters, or 80 kBq/cm2 for all other alpha emitters.
• The nonfixed contamination plus the fixed contamination on the inaccessible surface averaged over 300 cm2 does not exceed 800 kBq/cm2 for beta and gamma and low toxicity alpha emitters, or 80 kBq/cm2 for all other alpha emitters.

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