Symposium on Science at PAUL (Paarl Africa Underground Laboratory)

GEANT4 Simulation of passive water shielding for low-level radioactivity measurements

Not scheduled

15m

Du Kloof Lodge, Du Toitskloof Mountains

Muon flux and Radiation

Speaker

Munirat Bashir (Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University Lapai, Nigeria)

Description

GEANT4 Monte Carlo toolkit was used to design a passive water shielding to reduce back-ground radiation from the measurement environment reaching the detectors. The shield was then constructed using a large water tank allowing detectors to be mounted inside the shield. Measurement were performed using two LaBr3:Ce detectors without shielding and the same two LaBr3:Ce detectors inside the constructed water shield. Measurements were also carried out using a NaI:Tl detector without shielding and inside the water shield. Both the simulated and measured results show that the water shield attenuates 2614.5 keV (208Tl/232Th series) gamma rays by 90 %. This energy is the maximum full-energy peak centroid in the gamma-ray spectrometry spectrum of naturally occurring radioactive material (NORMs).