Study on gamma ray shielding performance of concretes doped with natural sepiolite mineral

Gamma ray attenuation coefficients for various concrete types containing natural sepiolite mineral and B4C have been experimentally investigated at different gamma energies. In order to obtain the gamma rays, the four radioactive point-isotropic sources 133Ba, 137Cs, 60Co and 22Na which energies ranged from 80.9 to 1332.5 keV have been utilized. The measurements have been carried out by using HPGe detector and MCA equipped with a personal computer. The morphological structure and elemental compositions of the concretes have been measured with scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) analyses. Linear attenuation coefficient (μ), mass attenuation coefficient (μ m ), half value layer (HVL) and mean free path (MFP) have been calculated for all concretes. The obtained results have been compared to the other materials such as Pb and Al.