• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권9호
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• pp.3470-3477
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• 2022

Soils are porous materials with high shielding capability to attenuate gamma and X-rays. The disposal of radionuclides throughout the soil profile can expose the living organisms to ionizing radiation. Thus, studies aiming to analyze the shielding properties of the soils are of particular interest for radiation shielding. Investigations on evaluating the shielding capabilities of highly weathered soils are still scarce, meaning that additional research is necessary to check their efficiency to attenuate radiation. In this study, the radiation shielding properties of contrasting soils were evaluated. The radiation interaction parameters assessed were attenuation coefficients, mean free path, and half- and tenth-value layers. At low photon energies, the photoelectric absorption contribution to the attenuation coefficient predominated, while at intermediate and high photon energies, the incoherent scattering and pair production were the dominant effects. Soils with the highest densities presented the best shielding properties, regardless of their chemical compositions. Increases in the attenuation coefficient and decreases in shielding parameters of the soils were associated with increases in clay, Fe₂O₃, Al₂O₃, and TiO₂ amounts. In addition, this paper provides a comprehensive description of the shielding properties of weathered soils showing the importance of their granulometric fractions and oxides to the attenuation of the radiation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제52권11호
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• pp.2607-2612
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• 2020

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 Σ_R (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 Σ_R (cm^-1) to 0.141 compared to 0.094 of ordinary concrete.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권1호
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• pp.283-292
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• 2022

Advanced radiation applications have been widely used and extended to many fields. As a result of this fact, choosing an appropriate shielding material based on the radiation application has become vital. In this regard, the integration of elements into polymer composites has been investigated and contributed to the quantity and quality of radiation shielding materials. This study reports photon attenuation parameters and electromagnetic shielding effectiveness of a novel polymer composite prepared with a matrix reinforced with three different proportions (5, 10, and 15 wt%) of niobium content. Addition of Nb dopant improves both photon attenuation and electromagnetic shielding effectiveness for the investigated composites. Therefore, Nb(15%) polymer composite with highest concentration has been found to be the best absorber for ionizing and non-ionizing radiations. Consequently, the performed analyzes provide evidences that the prepared Nb-reinforced polymer composite could be effectively used as photon radiation attenuator and electromagnetic shielding material.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제56권4호
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• pp.1544-1551
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• 2024

A unique brick series based on Vietnamese clay was manufactured at 114.22 MPa pressure rate for γ-ray attenuation purposes, consisting of (x) metallic waste & (90%-x) red clay mineral & 10% (hardener mixed with epoxy resin), where (x) is equal to the values 0%, 20%, 40%, 50%, and 70%. The impacts of industrial metal waste ratio in the structure and radiation protective characteristics were evaluated experimentally. The increase in metallic waste doping concentrations from 0% to 70% was associated with an increase in the manufactured brick's density (ρ) from 2.103 to 2.256 g/cm³ while the fabricated samples' porosity (Φ) decreased from 11.7 to 1.0%, respectively. Together with a rise in fabricated brick's density and a decrease in their porosities, the manufactured bricks' γ-ray attenuation capacities improved. The measured linear attenuation coefficient (μ, cm^-1) was improved by 30.8%, 22.1%, 21.6%, and 19.7%, at E_γ equal to the values respectively 0.662, 1.173, 1.252, and 1.332 MeV, when the metallic waste concentration increased from 0% to 70%, respectively. The study demonstrates that manufactured bricks exhibit superior radiation shielding properties, with radiation protection efficiencies of 88.4%, 90.0%, 91.7%, 92.1%, and 92.4% for bricks with industrial metal waste contents of 0%, 20%, 40%, 50%, and 70%, respectively, at γ-ray energy (E_γ) of 1.332 MeV.

• 한국의학물리학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국의학물리학회 2003년도 제27회 추계학술대회
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• pp.41-41
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• 2003

Purpose: Even if the wedge filter is widely used for the radiation therapy to modify the photon beam intensity, the wedged photon beam dose calculation is not so easy. Radiation therapy planning systems (RTPS) have been used the empirical or semi-analytical methods such as attenuation method using wedge filter parameters or wedge filter factor obtained from measurement. However, these methods can cause serious error in penumbra region as well as in edge region. In this study, we propose the dose calculation algorithm for wedged field to minimize the error especially in the outer beam region. Materials and Method: Modified intensity by wedge filter was calculated using tissue-maximum ratio (TMR) and scatter-maximum ratio (SMR) of wedged field. Profiles of wedged and non-wedged direction was also used. The result of new dose calculation was compared with measurement and the result from attenuation method. Results: Proposed algorithm showed the good agreement with measurement in the high dose-gradient region as well as in the inner beam region. The error was decreased comparing to attenuation method. Conclusion: Although necessary beam data for the RTPS commissioning was increased, new algorithm would guarantee the improved dose calculation accuracy for wedged field. In future, this algorithm could be adopted in RTPS.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제51권8호
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• pp.2005-2012
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• 2019

This work investigated the radiation attenuation characteristics of three series of tellurite glass systems with the following compositions: 30PbO-10ZnO-xTeO₂-(60-x)B₂O₃ where x = 10, 30, 40, 50 and 60 mol%, xBaO-xB₂O₃-(100-2x)TeO₂ with x = 15-40 mol% and 50ZnO-(50-x)P₂O₅-xTeO₂, where x = 0, 10, .40 mol%. The results revealed that the attenuation parameters in all the samples decrease with increase in the energy, which implied that all the samples have better interaction with gamma photons at low energies and thus higher photon attenuating efficiency. From the three systems, the samples coded as PbZnBTe60, BaBTe70 and ZnPTe40 have the lowest half value layer values and accordingly have superior photon attenuation efficacy. The maximum effective atomic number values were found for energy less than 0.1 MeV particularly near the K-edges absorption of the heavy atomic number elements such as Te, Ba and Pb. At the lowest energy, the Z_eff values are found in the range of 62.33-66.25, 49.43-50.81 and 24.99-35.83 for series 1-3 respectively. Also, we found that the density of the glass remarkably affects the photon attenuation ability of the selected glasses. The mean free path results showed that the PbO-ZnO-TeO₂-B₂O₃ glass system has better radiation shielding efficiency than the glass samples in series 2 and 3.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제53권4호
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• pp.1323-1330
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• 2021

This work reported the radiation shielding characteristic of the bismuth titanium vanadium sodium tellurite glass system. The density of the specially-developed glass samples was increased from 2.21 to 4.01 g/cm³ with the addition of Bi₂O₃, despite the fact the molar volume is decease within 85.43-54.79 cm³/mol. The WinXcom program was used to approximate the effect of Bi₂O₃ on the gamma radiation shielding parameters of bismuth titanium vanadium sodium tellurite glasses. The ㎛ values decrease with the increase of Bi₂O₃ concentration. The computed data shows that the glass sample with 20 mol.% of Bi₂O₃ content has the greatest radiation attenuation performance in comparison to other selected glasses. The Bi₂O₃-TiO₂-V₂O₅-Na₂O-TeO₂ glass system shows excellent neutron shielding material with high long-term light transmittance and discharge resistance and could be potentially used as transparent radiation-resistant shielding glass applications.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제56권7호
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• pp.2437-2443
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• 2024

This work synthesized four glass samples with a fixed ratio of PbO to Na₂O and a variable ratio of BaO to B₂O₃. The linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) (μ, cm^-1) and additional attenuator parameters were determined experimentally using a semiconductor detector and different gamma sources. The comparison was carried out between the experimental and the XCOM calculated results, with good agreement emerging between the two results. The impacts of the BaO substituting for the B₂O₃ on fabricated PNBB glasses' radiation shielding properties were discussed. By increasing the BaO substitution concentration between 10 and 25 mol.%, the LAC μ values (cm^-1) increased by 76.60 %, 13.81 %, 12.56 %, and 12.52 % for the respective γ-ray energies of 0.059, 0.662, 1.173, and 1.332 MeV. The μ value reduction with raised gamma energy values increased the values of the calculated half-value thickness (Δ_0.5) as a result of the μ and Δ_0.5 values' reverse proportionality. Other shielding parameters such as the lead equivalent thickness (Δ_eq) and radiation protection efficiency were also determined for the present PNBB glass samples.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제49권8호
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• pp.1758-1771
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• 2017

In this study, to determine the most effective alloy for shielding against gamma-rays, the gamma-ray shielding parameters of six types of cerrobend alloys have been investigated. Gamma-ray interaction with the cerrobend alloys has been discussed mainly in terms of total mass attenuation coefficient (${\mu}_t$), half value layer (HVL), tenth value layer (TVL), effective atomic number ($Z_{eff}$), and effective electron density ($N_{eff}$). These parameters have been calculated by theoretical approach using the ParShield program in a photon energy range between 0.1 MeV and 100 GeV. The dependence of these parameters on the incident photon energy and chemical composition of the cerrobend alloys has been studied.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제50권6호
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• pp.944-949
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• 2018

The mass attenuation coefficients (${\mu}/{\rho}$) of food waste samples (pomegranate peel, acorn cap, lemon peel, mandarin peel, pumpkin peel, grape peel, orange peel, pineapple peel, acorn peel and grape stalk) have been measured employing a Si(Li) detector at 13.92, 17.75, 20.78, 26.34 and 59.54 keV. Also, the theoretical values of the mass attenuation coefficients have been evaluated utilizing mixture rule from WinXCOM program. The results showed that the lemon peel has the highest values of ${\mu}/{\rho}$ among the selected samples. From the obtained mass attenuation coefficients, we determined some absorption parameters such as effective atomic number ($Z_{eff}$), electron density ($N_E$) and molar extinction coefficient (${\varepsilon}$). It was found that the $Z_{eff}$ values of all food wastes lie within the range of 4.034-7.595, whereas the $N_E$ of the studied food wastes was found to be in the range of $0.301-1.720{\times}10^{25}$ (electrons/g) for present energy region.