Nuclear shielding properties and buildup factors of Cr-based ferroalloys

This paper presents the radiation attenuation properties and buildup factors of ferroalloys described by the chemical structure of Cr-Fe-Si-C. By using Geant4 Monte Carlo simulations, Phy-X library, and several theoretical approaches, we successfully demonstrated the potential use of ferroalloys in nuclear shielding applications. The results indicate that the density and higher atomic numbers of Cr and Fe play a main role to enhance the radiation attenuation properties and then the nuclear shielding performance of the present alloys. The energy response of $\mu$ and $\frac{\mu }{\rho }$ depicts that PE, CS, and PP are the major attenuation processes within the energy range of 15–600 keV, 800 keV–10 MeV, and at 15 MeV, respectively. At each energy, $Z_{eff}$ increases with Cr content of the alloy, hence ($Z_{eff}$)_CrFeSiC4 > ($Z_{eff}$)_CrFeSiC3 > ($Z_{eff}$)_CrFeSiC2 > ($Z_{eff}$)_CrFeSiC1. This study suggests that the studied ferroalloys are superior radiation shields compared to ordinary concrete, barite concrete, and RS360. They thus have high potential to perform better in radiation protection functions.