Investigation ofthe gamma ray shielding parameters of (100-x)[0.5Li2O–0.1B2O3–0.4P2O5]-xTeO2 glasses using Geant4 and FLUKA codes

Abstract

In the present work, the radiation shielding proeprties of lithium borophosphtellurite glass system with the composition of (100-x) [0.5Li2O-0.1B2O3–0.4P2O5]-xTeO2 (x = 0, 10, 20, 30 and 40 mol%) were reported. The mass attenuation coefficient (μ/ρ) of the selected glass system (LiBPTe0, LiBPTe10, LiBPTe20, LiBPTe30 and LiBPTe40) was calculated at 356 keV, 662 keV, 1173 keV and 1330 keV photon energies by using Geant4 and FLUKA codes and the results were compared to the values obtained theoretically using WinXcom software. The correlation theory has been used to calculate the correlation coefficients (R2) between the results from WinXcom and the both simulations codes (Geant4 and FLUKA) for each sample. Moreover, some other radiation shielding parameters such as effective atomic number, photon transmission, mean free path and half value layer were calculated. The gamma photon transmission results showed that the transmission values of the 356 keV photons are lower than those of energies 662, 1173 and 1330 keV. At 356 keV, the transmission value for LiBPTe0 (at 6 cm thickness) is found to be 0.245 while at the same energy and thickness the transmission value is 0.088 for LiBPTe40. Out of all the glasses considered in present work, LiBPTe40 possesses the highest values of effective atomic number (Zeff). The Zeff values for the present glasses are 8.02, 9.55, 11.16, 12.85 and 14.64 for LiBPTe0, LiBPTe10, LiBPTe20, LiBPTe30 and LiBPTe40 respectively at 356 keV. The mass attenuation coefficient and effetive atomic number results showed that utilization 40% mol of TeO2 significantly improves the gamma ray shielding properties of the selected glass system. The shielding effectiveness of the selected samples was compared with other reference materials namely two radiation shielding glasses and four concretes used in different shielding purposes in terms of the mean free path (MFP) at 356 keV. The results revealed that the MFP of RS-253-G18 is lower than LiBPTe0sample. Moreover, the MFP of ordinary concrete is higher than the MFP of all glasses under examination, thus the investigated tellurite glasses have better attenuation features than the ordinary concrete.