Development of composite materials for non-leaded gloves for use in radiological hand protection

Lead is a hazardous material, and the U.S. Congress has mandated the rapid reduction of all hazardous waste generation as a matter of national policy. With the large amount of plutonium handling in numerous projects including the development of mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, 238Pu power sources, etc., hand glove protection for the emitted alpha, beta, and low energy photons is an important issue. Leaded gloves are the prime shields used for radiological hand protection. U.S. Department of Energy laboratories require a substitute material for the lead oxide in the gloves as a way to reduce mixed waste. To solve this problem, a new blend of non-hazardous materials that have the same radiological properties and approximately the same cost of production have been investigated. The investigations have produced alternative materials using calculations and experiments. The selection of the constituent compounds for the new composite materials was based on the k-absorption edge energy of the main constituent element(s) in the compounds. The formulations of these composites were fashioned on the principle of blending Neoprene rubber formulation with several constituent compounds. Calculations based on the Lambert-Beer attenuation law together with the mass attenuation coefficient values from the XCOM cross section database program were used to determine the transmission fractions of these proposed composite materials. Selected composite materials that compared favorably with the leaded-Neoprene were fabricated. These fabricated composite materials were tested with attenuation experiments and the results were in excellent agreement with the calculations using the Lambert-Beer attenuation law.