A Developed Material as a Nuclear Radiation Shield for Personal Wearing

摘要

A new composite of silicone rubber and boric acid was developed to be used as a personal wearing for protection from nuclear radiation. The capability of this material for absorbing thermal neutrons of different intensities followed by a detonation of nuclear weapon has been investigated. This investigation was performed by using californium-252 neutron source of like fission spectrum. The thermal neutron flux was measured behind different thicknesses of the developed material using a BF3 detector. Two positions of measurements were performed; at position near the detonation where the intensity of thermal neutron flux is low and at position far from the detonation where the intensity of thermal neutron is high. For both cases, the contribution of total thermal, initial incident and new produced thermal neutron fluxes are measured. The obtained results indicated that, addition of boron with concentration of about 17% to the silicon rubber tends to decrease the flux by more than 70%.