Enhanced radiation shielding with galena concrete

Abstract

A new concrete, containing galena mineral, with enhanced shielding properties for gamma sources is developed. To achieve optimized shielding properties, ten types of galena concrete containing different mixing ratios and a reference normal concrete of 2300 kg/m3 density are studied experimentally and numerically using Monte Carlo and XCOM codes. For building galena concrete, in addition to the main composition, micro-silica and water, galena mineral (containing lead) were used. The built samples have high density of 4470 kg/m3 to 5623 kg/m3 and compressive strength of 628 kg/m2 to 685 kg/m2. The half and tenth value layers (half value layer and tenth value layers) for the galena concrete, when irradiated with 137Cs gamma source, were found to be 1.45 cm and 4.94 cm, respectively. When irradiated with 60Co gamma source, half value layer was measured to be 2.42 cm. The computation modeling by FLUKA and XCOM shows a good agreement between experimental and computational results.

Keywords

• galena concrete
• shielding
• Monte Carlo
• FLUKA
• XCOM