Customer Reviews

Radiation Shielding

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Alas, alas -- there are as yet no good, useful, practical textbooks from which to learn the discipline of radiation shielding.

This book by Shultis & Faw is a valuable reference work, but not a practical textbook to teach a course on radiation shielding from. I have taught Radiation Shielding at University level for almost 2 decades, and this textbook is simply not a goopd teaching tool.

Like most other books on radiation transport & shielding, this book derives, with great travail of soul, a rather bewildering succession of hundreds upon hundreds of usually approximate, analytical formulations to enable "approximate calculations by hand" of radiation particle behaviour. In end-of-chapter exercises, students are then required to apply these approximate, inaccurate analytical expressions to solve an equally bewildering variety of problems with approximate manual calculations, in order to gain experience in the subject.

The real-life situation in the 21st century, is that shielding analysts use powerful codes running on fast digital computers to solve radiation transport and shielding problems. The practicing shielding analyst therefore requires the following knowledge and skills:

1) A broad, encyclopedic mastery of the physics concepts that govern ionising radiation emission, radiation transport and radiation dosimetry;
2) The ability to model radiation transport problems using a range of state-of-the-art radiation transport codes, e.g. the SCALE system and MCNP.

Because powerful and accurate radiation transport codes are available, it is not particularly meaningful to teach students a series of rather useless approximate analytical techniques. These techniques were valuable in the period 1940 to 1970, but have become obsolete and therefore rather irrelevant.

The preferred methodology to be followed in any modern course on Radiation Transport & Shielding is therefore:
1) Guide the student to understand and become highly skilled in the foundational concepts of the transport of ionising radiation. A conceptual, encyclopedic mastery of the subject is required to guide the practicing shielding analyst.
2) Present a clear formulation of the physics principles underlying radiation transport and the characteristic shielding abilities of important materials;
3) Give the student a feeling of how radiation transport codes work, by carrying out some steps of numerical solution techniques by manual computations;
4) Expose students to radiation transport codes used in the nuclear & radiation industry, notably SCALE and MCNP.
5) Teach and guide the student to begin building up a "toolbox" of calculational techniques, using e.g. MathCAD, MatLAB, Mathematica, Fortran code, etc. Such a calculational "toolbox" is one mark of a professional scientist. The moment a topic is mastered, the calculations involved in the analysis should be coded in e.g. MathCAD and be added to the scientists' calculational "toolbox."

(Physicists and applied mathematicians who develop radiation transport codes, of course, do need to master the numerical techniques required to solve radiation transport problems, in detail. Special textbooks deal with these topics.)

Having had the authors as professors while getting my nuclear engineering degree, I can assure you that these are two professionals that know what they are talking about. The book is an excellent reference for anyone involved in radiation shielding. If you are teaching a class related to this, you must have this book. The book presents a very thorough technical discussion of all aspects regarding radiation shielding.

This book provides an excellent overview of modern radiation shielding analysis. It includes a very solid introduction to concepts of ionizing radiation and radiation shielding. All references are were very much up-to-date and a lot of attention is being paid to advanced techniques. The book is a must for anyone who is or will be involved in serious radiation shielding engineering.

I have read 'Radiation Shielding' from cover to cover,and I must say that Shultis hit the nail on the head for almost every question I wanted answered.This book was very helpful in that it provided great detail for shielding procedures, step by step,unlike many other books I read.The only problem I found with this textbook is that the binding on it is weak,and comes off easily. Plus the pages have a strong smell of sulfur(fart) .This was probably due to a problem with the manufacture of the paper,but don't worry,it's not that bad.Thumbs up.Great book.

worst radiation book ever, attix does a MUCH better job!

author does not explain anything. material which should have been covered in 40 pages is condensed to 5-8 pages in each chapter...

don't buy unless you can't survive your class without this book.