system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What type of radiation does lead shielding stop?

As far as I'm aware there are only three types of ionising radiation - alpha, beta and gamma. Since alpha particles can be stopped by any sort of barrier, I'm most interested in beta and gamma radiation. Is lead shielding only able to stop one or both types?

In addition, do different types of shielding perform differently against different types of radiation. e.g. Would Osmium or Iridium work better/worse?

If I've made some glaring omission or have misunderstood something, please let me know.
gpt
> there are only three types of ionising radiation - alpha, beta and gamma.

That’s not true.

Lead will shield any of the three types of radiation you mentioned. Although alphas are easy to shield with anything, so you don’t really need lead. Betas can be shielded with lead, but high-Z materials cause betas to emit a lot of bremsstrahlung as they slow down, so for betas you usually something with low Z to slow down the betas, followed by something with high Z to absorb any bremsstrahlung. If the shield is just lead with nothing else, it’s probably for shielding x-rays/gamma rays.

To shield x-rays and gamma rays, you want a material with high Z. People will often think lead is chosen for its density, but actually the Z is what’s more important. Attenuation of photons is proportional to exp[-kz], where z is the depth into the shielding and k is proportional to the density and the total cross section for removal of a photon. So the factor k is linearly proportional to the density, but the cross section is usually some combination of power laws in Z, like Z^(2) or Z^(3). So the dependence on Z is much stronger than the dependence on density. (However the cross sections also vary with energy.)

So other high-Z materials would work too. Depending on what material it is, and what the expected photon energy is, the thickness of shielding might need to change a little, but they will all work.