Improving the quality of industrial products
Editorial review 2026
Every day, we use products whose manufacture involved the use of radiation. These products are absolutely not radioactive, but their quality may have been improved thanks to it.
In addition to monitoring or improving production, radiation can be used to modify the structure of materials, giving them properties suited to new applications.
Irradiation causes, under certain conditions, chemical reactions (free radicals) that enable the development of lighter and more resistant materials: insulation materials, electrical cables, heat-shrink tubing, prostheses.
An unexpected application …
Radioactivity, the wood industry and the evolution of species. The connection may seem incongruous, but museum directors are concerned about fragile parquet floors. Worn down by numerous visitors. The floor of the great gallery of the Museum of Natural History was impregnated with resins, exposed to gamma rays and made by this treatment as resistant as stone while preserving its appearance. © Paris-en-photos
Thus, beneficial changes in molecular structures have made it possible to obtain a whole range of everyday products. Certain plastics have been given the property of shrinking when heated. These heat-shrinkable products are commonly used in the packaging industry. Coatings used for insulating cables and electrical wires are thus made highly resistant to heat and chemical agents. Such products are commonly used in the automotive and aerospace industries and in domestic electrical equipment.
Card game enthusiasts need the plastic coating of their playing cards to be particularly resistant: radiation helps achieve this goal…
The coating of certain frying pans is manufactured by irradiating Teflon chips. Kitchen utensils are also concerned. The non-stick Teflon coating of “Tefal” pans used for cooking food is produced from chips made of micrograins obtained by irradiation.
In the tire industry, several manufacturers use radiation to vulcanize the rubber of their tires: this process provides an improvement compared with the conventional use of sulfides for this vulcanization.
In a very different field, the effect of radiation is to change the molecular structure of certain materials by enabling them to absorb considerable quantities of liquid. This property has been used to manufacture super-absorbent baby diapers that have been highly successful with parents.
It is possible to impregnate wood with a radiation-curable resin, then radiopolymerize this composite after eliminating the air. Thanks to technology transfer, this process used for the consolidation of works of art has developed in the parquet flooring industry. The result is densified wood, a true alloy of wood and plastic, which retains all its aesthetic appearance.
Irradiation phase
For the treatment, the trolley carrying the radioactive source is raised from the pool, the shielding cell door closed. In the background, a lead-glass window, absorbing radiation, allows operations to be monitored and controlled.
© ARC-Nucleart
The ARC NUCLEART facility
It began with the consolidation treatment using radiation-curable resins of the historic parquet floor of the Hôtel du connétable de Lesdiguières in Grenoble. Once impregnated, the wood is transferred into the irradiation cell where doses can reach several thousand gray.
Historic parquet floor of the Hôtel du connétable de Lesdiguières in Grenoble © ARC NUCLEART
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