Preparation and characterization of zinc, lanthanum white sand glass for use in nuclear applications

Glass derived from natural sand such as the white Sinai sand (WSS) is considered to be natural glass. It is known for its remarkable properties that exhibits excellent mechanical properties. Six natural glass networks had been prepared using the melt quenching method. The structural properties of the prepared samples were investigated by the X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique. Optical properties the glasses were evaluated by the UV-visible absorption measurements. Glass systems were evaluated for density, molar volume (V-M), oxygen molar volume (V-O), oxygen packing density (POD), and radiation properties according to the substitution of ZnO by La2O3. The mass attenuation coefficients (mu(m)), effective atomic numbers (Z(eff)) and gamma-ray kerma coefficients (k) of the glasses at different photon energies were determined experimentally and calculated theoretically. The obtained results have shown that the current glasses have superior shielding properties compared to basalt magnetite concrete (BMC) and steel scrap concrete (SSC) as standard radiation shielding materials. The substitution of ZnO by La2O3 improves all gamma-ray attenuation parameters by about 20-29%. Moreover, the attenuation of neutrons was discussed in terms of the macroscopic removal cross-section (Sigma(R)) and the glasses were found to have better neutron radiation shielding properties than SSC and BMC. These findings have demonstrated that the present glass systems can be suitably used as a shielding material at sites of the nuclear and X-ray facilities.