Computational Analysis of Gamma-Ray and Fast Neutron Attenuation performance of some Thorium and Uranium Compounds

Evaluation of the radiation shielding effectiveness of some compounds including Fe, Th, Y, Nb, Ta, Ti, and U have been computed for energy absorption and total interaction in the photon energy range from 0.015 to 15 MeV. The effective atomic number (Zeff), of these compounds was determined via the mass attenuation (µ/ρ, cm2/g) and mass energy absorption (µ/ρ, cm2/g)en coefficients. Accordingly, the values ​​of Zeff have been computed for total photon interaction (ZIeff) and energy absorption (ZAeff) using Py-MLBUF and Phy-X/PSD codes. The effective removal cross section for fast neutrons (ΣR, cm-1) and attenuation lengths were also calculated to study the attenuation properties of fast neutrons. The results displayed showed that, Zeff of S1 (UO2) and S2 (ThSiO4) are comparatively higher than the Zeff of the remaining compounds, while S7 (Fe(UO2)2(PO4)2.8(H2O)) possesses the lowest values of Zeff. The obtained results also show that ZAeff should be used instead of ZIeff when the quantity of interest is energy dissipation. In addition, the calculated values of ΣR ​​for the tested compounds were found to be close and ranged from 0.079 cm-1 for S4 to 0.146 cm-1 for S1. Moreover, comparison of the calculated values ​​for different shielding parameters showed good agreement between the proposed methods. Finally, this study could be useful in applications of these compounds for shielding requirements from gamma-ray and fast neutron in different fields such as, nuclear fuel cycles and medical shielding in uranium-handling environments.