Mass attenuation coefficients of brazilian soils in the range 10–1450 keV

Abstract The mass attenuation coefficients of the LRd-A 3 Brazilian soil has been measured at seven energies in the range of 59.5–1408.0 keV. Radioactive isotopes were used as sources of monoenergetic γ radiation in a narrow-beam collimated geometry. Experimental errors were in the range from 0.4 to 3.1%. Also mass attenuation coefficients of six Brazilian soils have been calculated in the energy range from 10 keV to 10 GeV to study the influence of chemical composition. Comparison between data, theoretical calculated values and data from the literature has been done for the LRd-A 3 soil.