Abstract
This work investigated the shielding effect of the building which is indispensable for the accurate evaluation of the population dose of external exposure from natural radiation.
At first, the attenuation coefficients of various building materials were measured and found to agree with the calculated values within 10% errors. The shielding factors of these materials were calculated from the calculated attenuation coefficients and buildup factors.
The shielding factors of the wall, window, roof and floor were calculated separately by settling the model houses and combining the shielding factors of the building materials used, and then the shielding factor of the whole building was obtained by use of the opening fraction of the wall and the fractions of the wall, roof and floorareas to the total floor area.
The influence of the shielding effect of the building is well represented by the occupancy factor which is the ratio of the group doses including that shielding effect to those excluding it. The occupancy factor lies between 0.9 and 1.0 for four specified districts, Tokyo, Osaka, Ibaraki and Nagano.
