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Perlite mineral contains relatively high water and in general hydrated obsidian forms the perlite which is mainly an amorphous volcanic glass. Photon attenuation properties for different concrete types including natural perlite mineral and B4C have been experimentally investigated by using different radioactive point sources at 81, 276, 303, 356, 384, 662, 1173, 1275 and 1333 keV. SEM and EDAX analyses were carried out to control the crystal structure of the selected concrete types. In this work, HPGe detector based on gamma spectrometer was employed for all experiments. The results revealed that among the prepared concrete samples, the P6 concrete sample has the lowest HVL and MFP values and thus, having best ability to attenuate gamma rays in comparison to the other prepared concretes. Keywords: Radiation shielding, Attenuation coefficient, Gamma spectrometer, Perlite

In this research, we investigated the burnup characteristics and the conversion of fertile 232Th into fissile 233U in the core of a Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor (SFR). The SFR fuel assemblies were designed for burning 232Th fuel (fuel pin 1) and 233U fuel (fuel pin 2) and include mixed minor actinide compositions. Monte Carlo simulations were performed using Serpent Code1.1.19 to compare with CRAM (Chebyshev Rational Approximation Method) and TTA (Transmutation Trajectory Analysis) method in the burnup calculation mode. The total heating power generated in the system was assumed to be 2000 MWth. During the reactor operation period of 600 days, the effective multiplication factor (keff) was between 0.964 and 0.954 and peaking factor is 1.88867.