Effect of addition of molybdenum on photon and fast neutron radiation shielding properties in ceramics

In the present research, standard ceramic and Molybdenum (Mo) doped ceramics were fabricated to determine the shielding properties against gamma and fast neutron radiation. The ceramics were exposed to photons with 81, 276, 302, 356, 383 keV energies emitted from 3 Ci Ba-133 radioactive source and the photon intensities were detected by utilizing Ultra Ge detector. With the obtained results, the gamma shielding parameters; mass attenuation coefficients (mu(rho)), the mean free paths (mfp), half value layers (HVL), tenth value layers (TVL), effective atomic numbers (Z(eff))and effective electron densities (N-el) were obtained experimentally and compared to the theoretical outcomes computed by utilizing WinXCOM program. It was found that, S4 ceramic containing 30% Mo element has higher mu(rho) and Z(eff ) value and lower MFP, TVL and HVL values than the other ceramics. The EBF and EABF values of S4 ceramic were lower than the values of other investigated ceramics. Thus, it has been concluded that the use of Mo element in ceramic increases the gamma shielding property of the ceramics. When the ceramics were examined in terms of fast neutron shielding, no important difference was found between the ceramics.