Experimental investigation of gamma radiation shielding ability of some building materials in Bitlis (Turkey)

Considering that people spend most of their time in buildings (home, office, school, shopping mall, etc.), it is seen that the radiation retention properties of building materials are important. Nuclear power plants are a complex of structures that are of great importance in today's energy-age world, but also bring some dangers. The most important of these dangers is the possibility of radiation leakage from these structures in the event of an ex-plosion. In addition, shielding for radiation protection is important in medical applications and industry where radiation is widely used. Therefore, the strength and durability properties of concretes to be used in the con-struction of nuclear power plants need to be meticulously designed. All this shows how important and worthy of research the subject of the study is. For this purpose, new materials that are easy to access, abundant and cheap, and have high absorption capability are needed, rather than shield made only of lead materials. Perlite, pumice and Ahlat stones are abundant in Bitlis (Turkey) province and are extracted from the quarries. The bims block samples (B-1, B-2 and B-3) produced in factories in Bitlis. This study was carried out to investigate whether these materials, which are used as building materials, have radiation absorbing properties in terms of their use in different areas. Linear attenuation coefficients were calculated experimentally for gamma energies at 88.04 +/- 0.01 keV, 356.50 keV, 661.60 keV, 834.80 +/- 0.04 keV and 1173.20-1332.50 keV (for 109Cd, 133Ba, 137Cs, 54Mn and 60Co radioactive point sources) using gamma spectrometry with a NaI scintillation detector. In addition, photon absorption percentages, half value layer (HVL), tenth value layer (TVL) and mean free path (MFP) values of the samples were calculated. The obtained data were evaluated by comparing with similar studies in this field and the results obtained for lead shield. As a result of the study, it is seen that instead of using perlite and pumice alone, it is better radiation trap when they are mixed with each other and formed into bims blocks.