Assessment of industrial ceramic manufacturing waste fragments as low-cost Gamma radiation shielding materials

Abstracts Various types of ceramic waste fragments were examined to study their gamma-ray attenuation properties and determine their suitability as an environmentally friendly and economical radiation shielding material. The microstructure of the ceramics was analyzed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) was used to determine the chemical composition of the samples. Experiments were performed to measure the linear attenuation coefficient (LAC), half-value layer (HVL), tenth-value layer (TVL), and mean free path (MFP) for photon energies of 241 Am (59.5 keV), 137 Cs (662 keV), 60 Co (1173 and 1332 keV). Theoretical calculations were performed using XCOM software to validate the experimental results and ensure accuracy. The results showed excellent agreement between the experimental and theoretical attenuation values (≤6 %), confirming the reliability of both methods. Furthermore, at all tested energies, the Emirates ceramics coded as S3 exhibited the highest LAC value (0.924 cm −1 ) at 59.5 keV and (0.179 cm −1 ) at 1332 keV, making it more effective at attenuating gamma rays than the other tested ceramic samples. The superior gamma-shielding properties of S3 are attributed to its optimized structure, which enhances its overall density and the presence of high-atomic-number elements (silicon, iron, and calcium). These results support the potential use of ceramic breakage waste in future radiation shielding applications.