A Monte Carlo study on attenuation characteristics of colemanite- and barite-containing resources irradiated by 252Cf source against neutron–gamma photon

The ongoing paper describes the neutron–gamma photon efficiency of two vinyl ester composites utilizing MCNPX Monte Carlo Simulation Code (MCSC), analytical calculations, and newly developed Phy-X: PSD software. The colemanite and barite vinyl ester composites were irradiated by 252Cf radio isotopic source. In this study, new methods, namely Watt Fission Distribution (WFD) and Doppler Effect (DE), are used to extract the neutron–gamma photon spectra for vinyl ester series. Fast Neutron Removal Cross Section (FNRCS) and other related neutron attenuation features are derived by analytical calculations. The analytical results reveal that the increasing rate of barite in vinyl ester series rises the fast neutron shielding capacity of the sample from 4.722 to 7.117 cm−1, while a descending trend of 9.905 cm−1 to 9.572 cm−1 is found for the colemanite vinyl ester series. Moreover, the gamma photon Linear Attenuation Coefficient (LAC) is extracted via MCNPX simulation. Accordingly, increasing order of (LAC)V-C0% < (LAC)V-C20% < (LAC)V-C50% < (LAC)V-B0% < (LAC)V-B20% < (LAC)V-B50% is reported for the colemanite and barite vinyl ester series. The effective atomic number (Zeff) experiences a sharp peak for barite vinyl ester composites which may be due to the K-edge absorption of high Z element resources. From the obtained results, it can be deduced that V-C0% has the best neutron shielding performance, while V-B50% possesses the highest shielding capacity against gamma photon among the rest of the colemanite- and barite-containing resources. These results could be highly beneficial for further investigation in different fields of study.