Analysis of radiation shielding effectiveness of hydride and borohydride metals for nuclear industry

Abstract

Hydrogenous materials are of great interest in nuclear industry because of the ability of hydrogen to slow-down neutrons. In comparison with common hydrogenous materials, metal hydrides highly enriched with hydrogen at high temperatures and good mechanical properties. This study concerns on evaluation the requirements for photons, charged particles and fast neutrons shielding parameters for several types of hydride and borohydride metals. Firstly, photons shielding ability of these materials were examined using Phy-X/PSD program. Assigning the attenuation factors of photons were evaluated for an energy range (1 keV–100 GeV). Secondly, the charged particle (electron, proton and alpha particle) interactions were examined by using ESTAR (Stopping Powers and Ranges for Electrons) and SRIM (The Stopping and Range of Ions in Matter) programs. Finally, fast neutron attenuation was tested by calculating the removal cross-sections (Σ_R) for neutron with energy 4.5 MeV. The dependence of photons, charged particles and fast neutrons parameters on the constituent of tested samples was given and discussed. The obtained results through this work show that, the shielding proficiency parameters depend on the energy of the incident radiation and chemical constituents of the examined materials. As well as, these results showed that BaH₂, ZrH₂, VH₂ and TiH₂ samples own a good shielding performance compared to the other investigated samples.