Gamma and X radiation attenuation characteristics for ultrahigh properties of concrete, concrete with barite and concrete with magnetite and steel

Abstract

During the implementation of construction barrier design procedures for protection against gamma and X radiation, the inevitable question arises of choosing building materials with suitable mechanical and radiation characteristics for protective barriers. Based on engineering practice, it is necessary to compare different types of concrete used for the construction of buildings in which there are sources of gamma and X radiation, as in cases where radiation sources appear in medical institutions with linear accelerators, cyclotron installations for the acceleration of nuclear particles, in the environment of nuclear reactors, in radioactive waste warehouses or in radiation sterilization units. In the analysis of costs and benefits, several criteria are used to evaluate the characteristics of concrete, so that, in addition to the mechanical ones, the radiation characteristics of the building material are also taken into account. One of the most important characteristics of radiation shielding concrete is its overall mass attenuation coefficient. In this paper, the XCOM computer code was used to calculate the total mass attenuation coefficients in the energy range from 0.01 MeV to 100 MeV for three types of concrete: ultrahight properties concrete (UHPC), concrete with barite and concrete with magnetite and steel. Based on the comparison of the calculation results, it was concluded that concrete with magnetite and steel has a greater protective power than the other two types of concrete for gamma and X radiation energy lower than 30 keV. Another important conclusion is that concrete with barite has a higher protective power than the other two types of concrete in the photon energy range from 30 keV to 300 keV, and for photon energy greater than 6 MeV. A detailed analysis of the calculation results revealed that in the energy range from 400 keV to 6 MeV the values for the total mass attenuation coefficients are approximately the same for three different types of concrete.