Title: Modified austenitic stainless-steel alloys for shielding nuclear reactors

Abstract

In nuclear fields steel alloys are generally used for radiation shielding especially in structure of nuclear reactors. The cobalt element is one of the steel alloys composite elements. The cobalt element is an expensive element; this makes the steels rather expensive, preventing wider selection and application. So the principal aim of this research is preparing cobalt-free stainless steel as shielding to reduce the production cost. Therefore, seven different free-cobalt steel alloys were prepared by using an electro slag re-melting technique. Steel compound ratios were determined by using XRF techniques and the attenuation properties of these alloys were studied by using the software WinXCOM computer program at photon energies 80, 356, 662, 1173, and 1332 keV. Furthermore, the total macroscopic cross-section was determined by using “Geant 4” code for fast neutron radiation shielding. Also the mean free path, half value layer, the atomic effective number and Transmission coefficient of neutron dose calculated. The results prove an excellent cobalt-free steel alloys have good mass attenuation to be used as a proper shielding material in the nuclear field, this clear such as in the sample (0.032 % Ni, 0.009 % Mo, 0.087 % Cr, 0.948 % Mn, 0.002 % Ti, 0.005 % V, 97.01 % Fe, 0.3 % C, 0.035 % P, 0.012 % S) with density 8.28 g/cm3. Also shielding parameter variations were applied to the steel alloys to investigate the superior shielding properties to gamma rays.