Concrete is considered to be an excellent and versatile shielding
material. It is a relatively inexpensive material, which may be easily
handled and cast into complex shapes. It contains a mixture of
many light and heavy elements and therefore has good nuclear
properties for the attenuation of photons and neutrons (Abdo
et al., 2002; Gencel et al., 2010a,b). The probability of a photon
interacting in a particular way with a given material, per unit path
length, is called the ‘linear attenuation coefficient’. To design a biological
shield it is important to determine this coefficient. One of
the material parameters that highly influence the shielding effect
is density. The concrete density can be controlled by concrete contents
and mass percentage. The ratio of linear attenuation coefficient
over material density (l/q) was called ‘mass attenuation
coefficient’ is commonly addressed as main parameter in shielding
studies. The mass attenuation coefficients for a number of elements,
at photon energies ranging from 1 keV to 20 MeV, have
been tabulated and reported by Lamarch and Barrata (2001) and
Seltzer and Hubbell (1995).