An assessment of protective coating dry cask canisters with structurally amorphous metals (SAMs) for enhanced radiation shielding

The shielding properties of the most common structurally amorphous metals (SAMs) as coating barriers for radiation shielding and corrosion have been computationally studied, for possible use on spent fuel dry cask canisters applications, using the Microshield computational simulation package. The results revealed that SAM1651 exhibited the highest attenuation coefficients and lowest exposure rates at low photon energies, which is attributed to its high elemental content of molybdenum (Mo) and yttrium (Y), while SAM2X5 exhibited the highest attenuation coefficients and lowest exposure rates at high photon energies, due to its high density (7.6 g/cm(3)) and its elemental content of manganese (Mn), tungsten (W) and silicon (Si). The third SAM material known as SAM 40 had the highest iron content (52.3%), but the results were close to the SAM2X5 as other components were similar, however, SAM2X5 was of higher density. The mean-free path (MFP) and half-value layer (HVL) were very similar for all the three tested SAM materials.