ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Swiss nuclear power and the case for long-term operation
Designed for 40 years but built to last far longer, Switzerland’s nuclear power plants have all entered long-term operation. Yet age alone says little about safety or performance. Through continuous upgrades, strict regulatory oversight, and extensive aging management, the country’s reactors are being prepared for decades of continued operation, in line with international practice.
Muneerah A. Al-Aqeel
Nuclear Technology | Volume 211 | Number 4 | April 2025 | Pages 742-754
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2024.2355405
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In modern life, cement products have become an essential material for the foundations in many structural building designs. Because of this, the natural effects of this material need to be tested and cannot be ignored. Modeling interactions of gamma rays with several cementitious compounds is the focus of this study. Gamma radiations exist naturally and artificially, but with limited gamma-ray energies, which are not easy to access for experimental gamma attenuation studies. So in the current work, a wide range of low gamma-ray energies (0.01 to 0.356 MeV) are applied to investigate the gamma radiation attenuation properties theoretically for different cement materials. Also, the Monte Carlo statistical method is applied using the Geant4 toolkit to simulate the results.
The outcomes are compared with theoretical values using XCOM to validate at these energies. The effective atomic number (), electron density (), and half-value layers (HVLs) for the studied samples are computed based on the simulated mass attenuation coefficient (), as expected. The outcomes show good agreement between the simulated results with those calculated theoretically by XCOM within an 11% deviation.
The silica fume sample showed a slightly higher value compared with the other samples. The dependence of the photon energy and cement composition on the values of the and HVLs are investigated and discussed. In addition, the values of and for all cement samples behaved similarly in the given photon energy range, and they decreased as the photon energy increased.