A simple spreadsheet program for calculating mass attenuation coefficients and shielding parameters based on EPICS2017 and EPDL97 photoatomic libraries

Composites cement/BaSO4/Fe3O4/CuO for improving X-ray absorption characteristics and structural properties

Composite cement/BaSO₄/Fe₃O₄/CuO with a thickness of 0.6 cm for various amounts of CuO: 2 wt%, 4 wt%, 6 wt%, and 8 wt% were successfully synthesized for the X-ray radiation shield. The bonding characteristics of composite and structural properties were determined using Fourier transform infrared spectra for the wavelength range of 4000–400 cm⁻¹ and X-ray diffraction with the range of 2θ from 25° to 50°, respectively. The shielding ability was measured using a mobile X-ray with an energy of 55, 66, and 77 keV for determining the mass and linear attenuation coefficient, electronic and atomic cross-section. These shield characteristics best agreement with theoretical calculation from the XCOM database for energy < 77 keV with half value layer (HVL) < 0.3 cm. The best shielding in this study indicated by the lowest HVL and MFP is composite for CuO 8 wt%. The HVL and MFP shows better values compared to the previous reported using composite rubber-based, indicated high potentials composite in this study for design new and efficient radiology rooms as an alternative concrete, especially for X-ray radiation, in the future.

Nuclear Radiation Shielding Characteristics of Some Natural Rocks by Using EPICS2017 Library

Radiation leakage is a serious problem in various technological applications. In this paper, radiation shielding characteristics of some natural rocks are elucidated. Mass attenuation coefficients (µ/ρ) of these rocks are obtained at different photon energies with the help of the EPICS2017 library. The obtained µ/ρ values are confirmed via the theoretical XCOM program by determining the correlation factor and relative deviation between both of these methods. Then, effective atomic number (Zeff), absorption length (MFP), and half value layer (HVL) are evaluated by applying the µ/ρ values. The maximum μ/ρ values of the natural rocks were observed at 0.37 MeV. At this energy, the Zeff values of the natural rocks were 16.23, 16.97, 17.28, 10.43, and 16.65 for olivine basalt, jet black granite, limestone, sandstone, and dolerite, respectively. It is noted that the radiation shielding features of the selected natural rocks are higher than that of conventional concrete and comparable with those of commercial glasses. Therefore, the present rocks can be used in various radiation shielding applications, and they have many advantages for being clean and low-cost products. In addition, we found that the EPICS2017 library is useful in determining the radiation shielding parameters for the rocks and may be used for further calculations for other rocks and construction building materials.

Evaluation of the Radiation Shielding Characteristics of Several Glass Systems Using the EPICS2017 Library

In this paper, the investigation of the Electron–Photon Interaction Cross Sections 2017 (EPICS2017) library on the shielding characteristics of several glasses under various chemical systems is presented. The EPICS2017 library of ENDF/B-VIII was interpolated to calculate the mass attenuation coefficients (MACs) of selected glass systems. Results from EPICS2017 have been compared with values from experimental and theoretical methods used to evaluate the photon shielding properties. The EPICS2017 estimations strongly agreed with experimental MAC results. The MAC values from several Monte Carlo codes (Geant4, MCNP4C, MCNP5, and FLUKA) based on EPDL97 or EPDL89 strongly agreed with EPICS2017-based interpolation, within reasonable deviations. The obtained results indicate that EPICS2017 can be used to evaluate the MACs for any glass system in which there are no experimental values available at various photon energies. It was demonstrated that the linear EPICS2017 library can be a considerable tool in future photon shielding research and developments of glass systems, as a recent alternative to the widely used XCOM by NIST.

Photon attenuation parameters of non-essential amino acids using EPICS2017 library interpolations

Mass attenuation coefficients, effective atomic numbers, electron densities and energy absorption and exposure buildup factors for the non-essential and conditionally non-essential amino acids including alanine, arginine, asparagine, aspartic acid, cysteine, glutamic acid, glutamine, glycine, proline, serine, and tyrosine have been acquired using the latest evaluated photoatomic library of EPICS2017. The library was used by constructing an interpolation script that calculates for all photon attenuation parameters. Comparisons were made using alternative Monte Carlo simulation results for 15 energy points from 59.5 to 1333 keV, and in contrast with experimental works in literature. Good agreements for the mass attenuation coefficients were observed between EPICS2017-based values compared with Monte Carlo code and experimental results. Similar trends for the effective atomic numbers and electron densities were observed from EPICS2017 interpolation and from results found in literature. Conversely, buildup factors acquired by Geometric-Progression fitting parameters were reported in this work preliminarily for most of these biomolecules at different penetration depths. Overall, cysteine showed the most significant deviation among the other non-essential amino acids due to the presence of sulfur in its molecular structure.