Radiation shielding properties of some ceramic wasted samples

The radiation has great importance in human life; it enters into various fields of agricultural, industrial, medical and food sterilization, for example, in the medical field, X-ray is used to diagnose many cases of a disease. The exposure to radiation has great risks to human life and must be protected against it. There are several ways to protect the human body from radiation; one of these ways is shielding; in the present work, eight types of ceramic materials have been used as a shielding material and tested against gamma ray, each type of ceramic modified as glazed and unglazed. The radiation sources Cs-137 and Co-60 were used to calculate attenuation coefficients and half-value layers by gamma-ray spectrometer system with scintillation detector NaI(Tl). The obtained results show that the photon attenuation coefficient for all samples decreases with increasing energy, while half-value layers increase with increasing energy. The results of the study showed that glazed ceramics are better than unglazed in the attenuation of gamma radiation which makes their use of shielding better.