The work aims to review the radioactive surface contamination monitoring instruments and summarize the radioactive surface decontamination methods in depth to meet the special requirements of surface decontamination of radioactive materials transport containers and provide application guidance. The principle and application of existing surface decontamination methods were systematically reviewed, and the potential advanced surface decontamination methods were summarized based on the defects of existing methods, so as to concise the future development direction. The decontamination method should be selected based on radioactive contents, material characteristics, decontamination budget, and the difficulty of secondary waste treatment, or a combination of several methods. However, the existing methods cannot give consideration to efficiency, cost and safety, so the surface pollution monitoring and green decontamination methods relying on new materials showed great potential. It is suggested that the decontamination method of clean radioactive surfaces should be studied emphatically, and the remote communication transmission and control technology of robot should be developed vigorously to realize the integrated operation of remote radioactive container surface pollution monitoring and decontamination.