Assessment of radioactivity and radon exhalation rate in Egyptian cement

The cement industry is considered as one of the basic industries that plays an important role in the national economy of developing countries. Activity concentration of 238U, 232Th, and 40K in local cement types from different Egyptian factories has been measured using a shielded HPGe detector. The average values obtained for 238U, 232Th, and 40K activity concentrations in different types of cement are lower than the corresponding global values reported in UNSCEAR publications. On the basis of the hazard index and the radium equivalent concentration, it can be shown that the natural radioactivity of cement samples is not greater than the values permitted in the established standards in other countries. A solid-state nuclear track detector SSNTD (Cr-39) was used to measure the radon concentration as well as exhalation rate for these samples. The effective radium content and the exhalation rate are found to vary from 12.75 to 38.52 Bq kg(-1) and 61.19 to 181.39 Bq m(-2) d(-1), respectively.