In this work, the radiation shielding properties of various natural stones, such as granite, basalt, andesite and tuff, were determined by using Monte-Carlo simulations performed with the Geant4 model of a high-purity germanium (HPGe) detector.Mass attenuation coefficients were calculated for $\gamma$ -ray energies of 80.9, 140.5, 356.5, 661.6, 1173.2 and 1332.5 keV and for the sample thicknesses between 1 and 7 cm. The results of this study indicate that the stone samples have lower mass attenuation values varying in the range from −28.8% to −3.7% compared to lead. Among the measured stone samples, the mass attenuation values of tuff stone are closest to lead (above661.6 keV).

In this study, mass attenuation coefficient ($\mu_{\rm{m}}$), transmission fractions ($T$), effective atomic numbers ($\rm{Z_{eff}}$) and half-value layer (HVL) of the $\rm{xPbO–(50 − x)BaO–50B_{2}O_{3}}$ (where x = 10, 20, 30, 40 mol%) glass system have been determined from the Monte Carlo simulations carried out with Geant4 and Fluka simulation toolkits and WinXCOM database software. The calculated results were compared with the experimentally obtained $\mu_{m}$ values of the selected glass in order to validate the Geant4 model of HPGe detector and Fluka model of NaI(Tl) detectors. $T$, $\rm{Z_{eff}}$ and $\rm{HVL}$ shielding parameters of the studied glass system indicate that increase of PbO content from 10 to 40% results in a better shielding behaviour thanks to the high atomic number of lead.