• High Performance Shielding Material to Prevent Radiation Leaks

    Bünyamin Aygün1,*, Turgay Korkut2, Abdulhalik Karabulut3

    1. Department of Physics Education, Faculty of Education, Atatürk University, 25040, Erzurum, Turkey.
    2. Sinop University, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Nuclear Engineering, Sinop, Turkey.
    3. Department of Physics Education, Faculty of Education, Atatürk University, 25040, Erzurum and İbrahim Çeçen University, Ağrı, Turkey.

    Abstract: Radiation has become part of our everyday life in nuclear power plants, treatment and diagnostics of nuclear envy, nuclear weapons construction, natural gas and oil exploration, material analysis and many other applications. In addition to the benefits of radiation, there are also major damages if adequate protection is not provided. In this work, high performance alloyed stainless steel specimens were produced to prevent gamma and fast neutron radiation leakage. Before passing through production, rapid neutron macroscopic cross sections and mass absorption coefficients for gamma radiation were determined as an important parameter in radiation shielding using semi-experimental Monte Carlo Simulation GEANT4 code. As a result of these simulations, molybdenum (Mo), tungsten (W), nickel (Ni), chromium (Cr), sulfur (S), manganese (Mn), titanium (Ti), silicon (Si), iron (Fe), using materials three different alloyed stainless steel products were produced by powder metallurgy and the produced samples experimental dose measurements were performed using 241Am-Be fast neutron source with 4.5 MeV average energies. For 7 MeV gamma radiation, mass absorption coefficients were determined semi-experimental. The samples were subjected to the acid wear test and the compressive strength test and were found to have high performance. The results were compared with the stainless steel 316LN which is widely used in nuclear applications. The produced samples were found to have very high properties according to this steel. It has been suggested that the new alloyed stainless steels produced can be used safely in nuclear applications for radiation safety. This study was supported by BAP, TUBITAK projects. Project No: 79/2013, 49 / 2014-111T764.

    Keywords: Alloyed stainless steel, fast neutron, Monte Carlo Simulation technique, armor.

    Pages: 247 – 253 | Full PDF Paper