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September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
The RAIN scale: A good intention that falls short
Radiation protection specialists agree that clear communication of radiation risks remains a vexing challenge that cannot be solved solely by finding new ways to convey technical information.
Earlier this year, an article in Nuclear News described a new radiation risk communication tool, known as the Radiation Index, or, RAIN (“Let it RAIN: A new approach to radiation communication,” NN, Jan. 2025, p. 36). The authors of the article created the RAIN scale to improve radiation risk communication to the general public who are not well-versed in important aspects of radiation exposures, including radiation dose quantities, units, and values; associated health consequences; and the benefits derived from radiation exposures.
J. T. Scoville, M. L. Walker
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 3 | April 2005 | Pages 774-778
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Plasma Engineering, Heating, Current Drive, and Control | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A780
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Modern tokamaks are highly sophisticated devices consisting of a large number of state-of-the-art systems that must function in unison to obtain a successful plasma discharge. An unsuccessful discharge can result if one or more systems fail, and diagnosis in an efficient and timely manner can be difficult. The resulting reduction in tokamak availability and productivity can be expensive, justifying a significant effort for automated fault diagnosis.For the DIII-D tokamak, a software system has been used for the past 5 years to automatically monitor and test the performance of hundreds of tokamak systems. The Fault Identification and Communication System (FICS) is automatically triggered to run immediately after each tokamak discharge and report its results via a simple color-coded graphical user interface. In addition to saving the operator time, the significant advantage of FICS is its ability to detect insipient faults that could lead to future machine failures. It has been estimated that FICS has saved an average of one to two shots per day, which equates to approximately 5% of all DIII-D pulses. The significant experience gained through the development and use of this post-discharge analysis tool also provides insight into future methods for on-line process monitoring of steady state devices