Abstract

The radiation shielding quality of concrete samples fabricated from three selected Nigerian cement brands were studied in this work. Three sets of concrete blocks of different thicknesses were produced using concrete mixes ratio of 1:2:4. The density of each block was determined and the average for each of the three sets were evaluated and found to be 2204 ± 0.024, 2269.109 ± 0.027, and 2235.705 ± 0.022 kg/m3, respectively. These results were found to have high precision with the world standard density for ordinary concrete (2350 kg/m3). The concrete block samples were exposed to a 60Co gamma radiation source and monitored using Sodium Iodide thallium activated detector. The average linear attenuation coefficient for the three sets samples were found to be 12.270 ± 0.021, 12.604 ± 0.070 and 12.189 ± 0.028 m-1, respectively. From the results, the quality of ordinary concrete produced from Nigerian cement demonstrated good fidelity with the world standard.