Abstract
This work aims to experimentally report the radiation attenuation factors for four different clays (red, ball, kaolin and bentonite clays) at four selected energies (emitted from Am-241, Cs-137, and Co-60). The highest relative difference in the mass attenuation coefficient (MAC) is equal to −3.02%, but most of the other results are much smaller than this value, proving that the experimental and theoretical data greatly agree with each other. From the MAC results, the shielding abilities of the clay samples at 0.060 MeV follow the order of: bentonite > red > ball > kaolin. Thus, at low energies, the bentonite clay sample provides the most effective attenuation capability out of the tested clays. The half value layer (HVL) increases as energy increases, which suggests that, only a thin clay sample is needed to sufficiently absorb the radiation at low energies, while at higher energies a thicker sample is needed to shield the same amount of high energy radiated. Furthermore, bentonite clay has the lowest HVL, while the kaolin clay has the greatest HVL at all energies. The radiation protection efficiency (RPE) values at 0.060 MeV are equal to 97.982%, 97.137%, 94.242%, and 93.583% for bentonite clay, red clay, ball clay, and kaolin clay, respectively. This reveals that at this energy, the four clay samples can absorb almost all of the incoming photons, but the bentonite clay has the greatest attenuation capability at this energy, while kaolin clay has the lowest.
Highlights
Radiation and nuclear technologies are widely applied in fields such as optimizing industrial processes, continuous form goods and products, nuclear power plants, radiology and nuclear medicine departments, and nuclear research and accelerator centers [1,2,3,4,5]
This step is important to determine that the experimental data is correct and that the experimental setup used is suitable to determine the mass attenuation coefficient (MAC) of the tested clay samples
The decrease in value indicates that clays are much more effective at absorbing incoming photons at lower energies, while at higher energies the thickness of the samples must be increased to provide the same levels of attenuation. We aimed in this experimental work to report the radiation attenuation factors for four different clays at certain defined energies
Summary
Radiation and nuclear technologies are widely applied in fields such as optimizing industrial processes, continuous form goods and products, nuclear power plants, radiology and nuclear medicine departments, and nuclear research and accelerator centers [1,2,3,4,5]. Radiation protection aims to protect people and the environment from the harmful effects of ionizing radiation exposure, and shielding is the most effective factor of the radiation protection process, as it can decrease the intensity of the incident radiation. It is very important to determine radiation shielding parameters of different kinds of building material to assess their capability of attenuating ionizing radiation when they are used as building materials in places that contain radiation sources [6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. The MAC is a fundamental radiation shielding parameter defining the interaction of gamma rays within the material. This parameter is used to assess the capability of the material to attenuate gamma rays. Many studies have aimed at calculating the mass attenuation coefficients of different construction materials in order to evaluate their gamma ray attenuation abilities [16,17,18]
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