Study of the properties of sustainable materials for shielding against ionizing radiations
The SuShi project aims at determining how sustainable materials can be used to shield against ionizing radiations. This contribution presents a comparison of the effect of concrete and rammed raw earth on photons. For energies around the MeV, where interactions by Compton scattering dominate, changes in the material composition have virtually no effect. The density difference results in 20% more thickness needed for earth to achieve the same flux attenuation as concrete. The same value is found for higher energies, where photons produce electromagnetic showers. Below 0.1 MeV, material composition and earth moisture content matter but the attenuation is much larger.