Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Investigation of acrylic/boric acid composite gel for neutron attenuation

  • Ramadan, Wageeh (Hot Laboratories Centre, Atomic Energy Authority) ;
  • Sakr, Khaled (Hot Laboratories Centre, Atomic Energy Authority) ;
  • Sayed, Magda (Hot Laboratories Centre, Atomic Energy Authority) ;
  • Maziad, Nabila (National Center for Radiation Research and Technology, Atomic Energy Authority) ;
  • El-Faramawy, Nabil (Faculty of Science, Ain Shams University)
  • Received : 2019.11.06
  • Accepted : 2020.04.10
  • Published : 2020.11.25
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Abstract

The present work was aimed to show the possibility of using hydrogel (acrylic/boric acid) for evaluation of the neutron radiation shielding. The influence of acrylic acid concentration, different gamma doses and relative contents of boric acid were studied. The physical properties and the thermomechanical stability of the studied samples were investigated. The shielding property of the composite for neutron was tested by Pu-Be neutron source (5 Ci) under room temperature. The neutron fluence rates and gamma fluxes were measured using a stilbene organic scintillator. The macroscopic effective removal cross-section ΣR (cm-1) of fast neutrons and total attenuation coefficient μ (cm-1) of gamma rays has been studied experimentally. The transmission parameters, the relaxation length (??) and the half-value layer (HVL) were obtained. The obtained results indicated that the addition of boric acid to acrylic acid tends to increase the macroscopic effective removal cross-section ΣR (cm-1) to 0.141 compared to 0.094 of ordinary concrete.

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