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Nuclear/HAZMAT diving – Branches of commercial diving [click here to return to previous page]

Nuclear / HAZMAT diving:  HAZMAT diving is widely regarded as the most dangerous branch of the commercial diving industry, employing highly skilled and experienced staff.  Typical work involves diving into raw sewage or dangerous chemicals, such as paper pulp, liquid cement or oil sludge, to do this, divers need to be vaccinated against diseases such as hepatitis and tetanus, the dive company needs to have specialist plans in place for decontamination of the diver and equipment following a dive, and procedures for recovery of the diver if something goes wrong.  The main tasks a diver can be found to be doing include essential maintenance of underwater valves and sluice gates, repairs to damaged pipelines, and pollution control work to contain, control and clean up after a pollution incident. Some divers are required to dive into landfill sites in order to maintain the pumping equipment, vital in preventing landfill sites from filling up with rainwater and contaminating the water table, other divers can be found welding inside live sewers or working in septic tanks.  Sewer diving is often considered the most dangerous of all the HAZMAT jobs due to the diseases contained in raw sewage coupled with the fact syringes and glass find their way into the raw sewage, creating risks of both contracting diseases should the diver be injured by a needle, and also damaging the drysuit.  Divers working in an environment harmful to their health will always wear a full drysuit with thick gloves which are attached directly to the suit, the helmet and boots will also attach directly to the drysuit, this allows the gloves, boots, suit and helmet to be pressured in order to prevent ingress of liquid should a puncture occur. Normally, to achieve this, a diver will use a free flow diving helmet which continually supplies enough air for the diver to breathe plus an additional amount to pressurized the suit, a free flow helmet has a much lower chance of leakage through the exhaust valve compared with a demand helmet where the exhaust valve is dormant during the inhalation stage of the diver breathing.  The drysuit will be made from a material resistant to whatever hazard the diver faces, normally this will see the diver wear a vulcanized rubber drysuit, but occasionally a neoprene or tri-laminate suit is required. Often, a diver will wear additional protection over their drysuit to decrease the chance of a puncture, leather, PVC and nylon coveralls are used for this purpose.  Nuclear diving is similar to HAZMAT diving, the difference is the exposure to radiation instead of a water borne contaminant. To this end certain different precautions are required for nuclear diving, mainly the use of equipment which will not absorb radiation and pose a disposal problem after multiple dives. Heat stress can also be a danger for the diver, in which case a cold water suit may be used, the cold water suit is a special canvas coverall which floods the outside of the divers drysuit with chilled water, countering the dangerously high ambient water temperature. A dosimeter is used to ensure the diver doesn't receive a dangerous dose of radiation during the dive, assisting in calculating the maximum length of the dive. In addition the dosimeter can also be used to find radiation hotspots, which can indicate areas in need of repair.

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Reference material for this scuba diving related informational article: wikipedia – the free online encyclopedia, scuba diving category

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