Investigation of specially designed bentonite samples as potential bricks with better radiation shielding properties

Bentonite clay, a naturally occurring very fine volcanic powder that lies mainly on the nano-scale, has been investigated during this study to assess the possibility of producing a brick with enhanced radiation shielding properties. Five samples were prepared based on natural bentonite and studied along with another three pre-viously studied building bricks. Physical properties such as density and particle size distribution have been studied for bentonite clay before and after calcination and ball-milling. Radiation attenuation parameters, which assess shielding against both energetic photons and fast neutrons, were calculated theoretically employing specific friendly-user programs such as WinXCom, Auto-Zeff, NXCom, and MRCsC and other analytical calcu-lations. Linear attenuation coefficients (& mu;) of bentonite samples were experimentally measured at 662 keV energy of Cs-137 and 1173 and 1332 keV energies of Co-60, gamma ray radioactive sources using NaI(Tl) inorganic scintillation detector. After that, a statistical comparison between theoretical and experimental (& mu;) values for all studied samples was conducted. It has been found that the density of the bentonite sample increases from 0.84 to 1.59 g/cm3 with calcination and pressing; moreover, ball-milled compressed calcined bentonite samples have shown promising & gamma;-rays radiation shielding properties among the studied samples having (& mu;) values range be-tween; 0.112-0.133 for E & gamma; equals 0.662 MeV, 0.090-0.110 for E & gamma; equals 1.173 MeV, and 0.087-0.105 for E & gamma; equals 1.332 MeV. Last but not least, an entire agreement between the theoretically obtained radiation atten-uation parameters using the abovementioned tools and the experimentally measured ones is not a must, espe-cially since other factors like average particle size and compression are not necessarily not considered upon using the tools above.