Grasp: A program to calculate some gamma shielding parameters

A new program was developed and tested to calculate a number of gamma-shielding parameters, such as mass attenuation coefficients, linear attenuation coefficients, half value layers, tenth value layers, mean free paths, and effective atomic numbers, for any element, compound, and mixture, in the gamma energy range of 1 keV – 100 GeV. The program is called GRASP, acronym for Gamma Ray Attenuation Shielding Parameters, it is written with the Python programming language (version 3.9.13) and can function on the Windows operating system. For a given material under study, the program reads the necessary information from a separate input file, where the user defines the composition of the material, the density, and the energy range of interest. Then it looks up cross section values of the elements constituting the material from its database, which is constructed using the XCOM program as a source. The cross-section values of the elements are inserted into built-in equations to calculate the gamma shielding parameters. Tables and graphs are produced and displayed in the output, and options of saving data are given. The results are observed to have great accuracy with theoretical values of mass attenuation coefficients and its derivatives, such as mean free paths and half value layers. Meanwhile for the effective atomic numbers the program is seen to have good accuracy in intermediate energies, a steady overestimation in high energies, and unpredictable uncertainty in the lower energies where absorption edges of elements of high atomic number reside. In comparison to most programs in the literature, GRASP can calculate mass attenuation coefficients at additional energies corresponding to characteristic absorption edges of elements. This gives more definition to its mass attenuation curves. The program is available upon request, it can aid other researchers as a primary or secondary tool to obtain or verify their gamma shielding data.