A review on sustainable utilization of industrial wastes in radiation shielding concrete

Abstract

The increasing problem of industrial wastes' (IWs) accumulation and shortage of conventional construction materials such as aggregates can be simultaneously addressed by a careful selection and utilization of IWs in concrete. This paper targets an explicit assessment of the current status of utilization of various IWs in a particular type of concrete, namely, ‘Radiation Shielding Concrete (RSC)’. RSC is a high-density concrete which prevents any potential leakage of the X-rays, gamma rays, and fast-moving neutrons in various establishments such as nuclear power structures, X-ray or radiology department rooms in the hospitals. Traditionally, RSC has been made using high density natural aggregates like haematite, magnetite, or ilmenite, but this practice faces several challenges such as the NA being a limited resource, expensive, and non-available in several parts of the world. This paper reviews the research being carried out for the gainful utilization of various categories of IWs such as slags, supplementary cementitious materials, mines wastes, and a few miscellaneous IWs like polymers and glass, for a partial or complete replacement of conventional constituents of RSC for a greener construction.