Evaluation of the radiation protection capabilities of some metal oxide glasses against radioisotopic gamma sources

In this research, the protection properties of tellurites metal oxide glasses such as TPZ, TNS, TBN, TSW, TBB glass and concrete (SSC) against 10 radiation gamma radioisotopic sources were investigated. For this purpose, the MCNPX code was used to simulate the photon transport in the samples and the XCOM cross section database was applied to calculate the mass attenuation coefficient. The effective atomic number, linear attenuation coefficient, and flux buildup factor against radiation of gamma radioisotopic sources were determined for the mentioned shields. The results show that considering the average energy in the radiation protection calculations for a multienergy gamma source cannot be a suitable criterion; therefor it should be considered the whole energy spectrum of the source. The TBB glass was the best photon attenuator compared to other tellurites metal oxide glasses, because it had the highest effective atomic number, linear attenuation coefficient, and minimum flux buildup factor for all gamma-radioisotopic sources.