Lead nitrate loaded, novel clay-based bricks as radiation shielding materials for building applications

A new class of clay bricks designed, developed, and tested for their radiation shielding efficiency. The bricks were prepared using natural clay, lake clay, and lightweight clay and loaded with different concentrations of Pb (NO₃) ₂. The gamma-ray shielding parameters were measured for these bricks with a transmission type of good geometry setup and operated at 511 and 662 keV energies. The gamma-ray spectrometer consists of a 2 inches × 2 inches NaI(Tl) detector, 8K multichannel analyzer. The ²²Na and ¹³⁷Cs point isotropic gamma-ray sources were used in this study. To evaluate the efficiency of these bricks, various shielding parameters, such as linear attenuation coefficient, mass attenuation coefficient, mean-free path, half-value layer and tenth-value layer were calculated. The X-COM software was used to calculate these parameters theoretically, and both the experimental and theoretical values were compared, and they are in good agreement. These results suggest that the clay bricks prepared with the natural and lake clay attenuate more radiation than the lightweight clay bricks. It is also observed that the lightweight bricks prepared with the solutions with higher loadings of lead nitrate showing increased attenuation, this may be attributed to the reason that at higher loadings of LN, the porous gaps of lightweight bricks are being filled by the LN particles and contributed to the attenuation of radiation. (author)