Investigation on radiation shielding parameters of bismuth borosilicate glass from 1keV to 100GeV

• DOI: 10.1016/j.anucene.2012.12.011
• Publication Date: 2013-01-18T23:19:49Z
• Authors: N. Chanthima; J. Kaewkhao
• Keywords: 02 engineering and technology; 0210 nano-technology; 7. Clean energy

Abstract The radiation shielding parameters of (50 − x)SiO2: 15B2O3: 2Al2O3: 10CaO: 23Na2O: xBi2O3 glass systems (where x = 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20 mol%) were theoretically calculated using WinXCom program. The characteristics of radiation shielding parameters for the glass systems of different bismuth compositions were found to be dependent on energy regions. At low-energy region, the radiation shielding parameters show several discontinuous jumps correspond to photoelectric absorption edges. At medium-energy region, the radiation shielding parameters are almost constant and the effective atomic number is close to the mean atomic number, dominated by Compton scattering process. In high-energy regions, pair production becomes the main interaction process and tends to be constant over energy. The mean free paths of the glasses were compared with several standard shielding concretes and it had been shown with lower values of MFP (from 10 MeV to 100 GeV) than serpentite, odinary, chromite, ferrite and barite except for the glass systems with 0 and 5 mol% of Bi2O3. The investigation was carried out to explore the advantages of the glass systems in radiation shielding applications.