Highly radioactive materials have to be examined behind massive shielding to protect personnel from the intense beta and gamma fields. Experience has shown that much maintenance time can be saved by mounting equipment to cell plugs so that a single machine can be removed without the necessity of shutting down the entire cell operation. Metallographic specimen preparation and photography have been reduced to an entirely remotized procedure. Various etchants have been tried and cathodic vacuum etching has proved more satisfactory than chemical procedures. Cathodically vacuum etched surfaces are much more stable than chemically etched ones and are in various other ways more suitable for remote metallographic study. Radiation darkening of objectives and other parts of the optical system is a major problem in remote metallography. The limited amount of work done to date has not fully explained the effects of irradiation on metallographic structures. Micrographs are presented of some materials after various degrees of irradiation.