Gamma-ray shielding properties of concrete including barite at different energies I. Akkurt a, * , H. Akyildirim a , B. Mavi a , S. Kilincarslan b , C. Basyigit b a Suleyman Demirel University, Fen-Edebiyat Fakultesi Fizik Bol, Isparta, Turkey b Suleyman Demirel University, Teknik Egt. Fakultesi Yapı Egt. Bol, Isparta, Turkey Keywords: Barite Concrete Gamma-ray shielding NaI(Tl) abstract Radiation shielding properties of barite and concrete produced with barite have been investigated. The results have been compared with the standard shielding material of lead. The linear attenuation coef- ficients have been calculated 1 keVe1 GeV and compared with the measurement performed using gamma spectrometer contains NaI(Tl) detector and MCA at 662,1173 and 1332 keV. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction From the beginning of using radioactive sources in a variety of fields with the development of technology, radiation dosimetry becomes an important subject in physics. Because radiation is dangerous for cell and it should be protected. This can be done by three main methods namely time, distance and shielding. Heavy elements such as lead or tungsten are ideal materials to be used in radiation shielding. On the other hand such heavy elements cannot be used in building construction. Barite (BaSO 4 ) is an alternative material can be used directly or as an aggregate in the concrete for this purposes. The radiation shielding properties of a material is presented in terms of the linear attenuation coefficient m (cm À1 ) and it is defined as the probability of a radiation interacting with a material per unit path length (Woods, 1982). As this subject is very important for health, many different studies on the linear attenuation coefficient of different materials in the literature have been performed. This includes biological materials (Chitralekha et al., 2005; Gowda et al., 2005; Icelli et al., 2004; Manohara and Hanagodimath, 2007; Midgley, 2005; Sandhu et al., 2002), elements (Murty et al., 2001; Murty and Devan, 2001, 2004), alloys (Angelone et al., 2001; El-Kateb et al., 2000; Icelli et al., 2005a,b; Murty et al., 2000), compound (Baltas et al., 2007; Bhandal and Singh, 1995; Icelli et al., 2003, 2004, 2005a,b; Icelli and Erzeneoglu, 2004; Khanna et al., 1996; Shivaramu and Ramprasath, 2000; Singh et al., 1996; Turgut et al., 2005) and some building materials (Akkurt et al., 2004, 2005a; Kharita et al., 2008; Bashter, 1997; El-Sayed, 2002; Singh et al., 2004). In this paper, the linear attenuation coefficients of barite, concrete produced with barite have been measured and compared with the standard shielding material lead. The measured results have been compared with the calculation. 2. Experimental details The concrete (BC) has been produced using Portland Cement (PC) 42.5 type of cement from Goltas plant in Isparta and barite was collected from Sarkikaragac-Isparta region at south of the Sultandagları region where the pureness of barite ore is 90% BaSO 4 . The water-to-cement ratio was kept constant of 0.5. The linear attenuation coefficients of barite, barite concrete and lead have been measured using the gamma spectrometer which contains 3 00 Â 3 00 NaI(Tl) detector (Akkurt, 2009). The signals from detector were amplified and recorded by a Multi-Channel-Analyser (MCA) which communicates with the PC by Genie2000(3.0) soft- ware. The schematic view of the experimental setup is shown in Fig. 1 . The spectrometer has been calibrated using g-ray sources of 137 Cs and 60 Co which emit 662, 1173 and 1332 keV energies respectively. The g-ray energy spectrum obtained from those sources and related energy-to-channel fit are displayed in Fig. 2 (upper and lower respectively) (Akkurt et al., in press). The linear attenuation coefficients (m cm À1 ) of a material is obtained by: m ¼ 1 x In N 0 N where N and N 0 are the background subtracted number of counts recorded in detector with and without material between detector and source respectively and x is the material thickness. When * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ90 246 211 4033; fax: þ90 246 2371106. E-mail address: iskender@fef.sdu.edu.tr (I. Akkurt). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Progress in Nuclear Energy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pnucene ARTICLE IN PRESS 0149-1970/$ e see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pnucene.2010.04.006 Progress in Nuclear Energy xxx (2010) 1e4 Please cite this article in press as: Akkurt, I., et al., Gamma-ray shielding properties of concrete including barite at different energies, Prog. Nucl. Energy (2010), doi:10.1016/j.pnucene.2010.04.006