A comprehensive study on radiation shielding characteristics of Tin-Silver, Manganin-R, Hastelloy-B, Hastelloy-X and Dilver-P alloys

Abstract

In this study, it is aimed to investigate alloys that can replace lead and its derivatives in terms of radiation shielding. A new alternative shielding material must have optimum properties that should be present in a protective material. For this purpose, this study focused on the determination of the radiation-shielding characteristics of five different alloys named Tin-Silver, Manganin-R, Hastelloy-B, Hastelloy-X and Dilver-P. The photon interaction parameters (µ, µm, λ, X1/2, σT, σe, Zeff, Neff, σeff and RPE) that give significant information about the radiation shielding capacities of the materials were calculated for the alloys in the energy range from 30 to 1333 keV. The narrow-beam transmission geometry was used to determine these parameters accurately and was adjusted such that the error rate is minimized. The present samples were irradiated with photons of nineteen different photon energies emitted from seven different radionuclides (241Am, 133Ba, 109Cd, 152Eu, 22Na, 137Cs and 60Co). Photon intensities were measured by using two different detectors (Si(Li) and NaI(Tl)) for convenient photon energy regions. Then, these parameters were also calculated theoretically using Phy-X/PSD software in order to compare the experimental and theoretical results. Furthermore, the Rinc/total, Zeq, G-P fitting coefficients (a, b, c, d and XK) and exposure build-up factors (β) for the alloys were calculated using Phy-X/PSD software at photon energy range from 0.015 to 15 MeV. In order to make a significant comparison about the shielding capacities of investigated alloys, the µm values obtained for the alloys were compared with corresponding values of Pb metal, RS 253 glass and Cupero-Nickel alloy. Consequently, the descending order of MAC values in the all surveyed energy region was obtained as Tin-Silver > Manganin-R > Hastelloy-B > Hastelloy-X > Dilver-P. In the low energy region, it was found that the all present alloys have better shielding performances than RS 253 glass and Cupero-Nickel alloy. The experimental results also revealed that the Tin-Silver alloy has 25% better shielding performance than Pb metal in the energy range of 30–88 keV. Finally, it was concluded that Manganin-R alloy could be considered as the most ideal shielding material in the entire photon energies studied along with its other superior features (high density (10.22 g cm−3), high melting point (2500–2600 °C), high tensile strength (560–1150 MPa), high modulus of elasticity (320 GPa) and high specific heat (305 J K−1 kg−1) although the Tin-Silver alloy had the highest µm values among the examined alloys.