Analysis of radiation shielding effectiveness of hydride and borohydride metals for nuclear industry

Hydrogenous materials are of great interest in nuclear industry because of the ability of hydrogen to slow-downneutrons. In comparison with common hydrogenous materials, metal hydrides highly enriched with hydrogen athigh temperatures and good mechanical properties. This study concerns on evaluation the requirements forphotons, charged particles and fast neutrons shielding parameters for several types of hydride and borohydridemetals. Firstly, photons shielding ability of these materials were examined using Phy-X/PSD program. Assigningthe attenuation factors of photons were evaluated for an energy range (1 keV–100 GeV). Secondly, the chargedparticle (electron, proton and alpha particle) interactions were examined by using ESTAR (Stopping Powers andRanges for Electrons) and SRIM (The Stopping and Range of Ions in Matter) programs. Finally, fast neutronattenuation was tested by calculating the removal cross-sections (ΣR) for neutron with energy 4.5 MeV. Thedependence of photons, charged particles and fast neutrons parameters on the constituent of tested samples wasgiven and discussed. The obtained results through this work show that, the shielding proficiency parametersdepend on the energy of the incident radiation and chemical constituents of the examined materials. As well as,these results showed that BaH2, ZrH2, VH2 and TiH2 samples own a good shielding performance compared to theother investigated samples