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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
F. Jatuff, P. Grimm, O. Joneja, M. Murphy, A. Lüthi, R. Seiler, R. Brogli, R. Jacot-Guillarmod, T. Williams, S. Helmersson, R. Chawla
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 139 | Number 3 | November 2001 | Pages 262-272
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE01-A2236
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
HELIOS, CASMO-4, and MCNP4B calculations of reaction rate distributions in a modern, fresh 10 × 10 boiling water reactor fuel element have been validated using the experimental results of the LWR-PROTEUS Phase I project corresponding to full-density water moderation conditions (core 1B). The reaction rate distributions measured with a special gamma-scanning machine employing twin germanium detectors consisted of total fission Ftot and 238U-capture C8. The average statistical errors for the gamma scans were better than 0.5% for Ftot and 0.9% for C8. The rod-by-rod measurements were performed on 60 different fuel rods selected from the central part of a test zone consisting of actual, fresh SVEA-96+ fuel elements, thus gaining in realism by departing from conventional fuel rod mockups. In the case of Ftot, the root-mean-square (rms) of the rod-by-rod distribution of differences between calculational and experimental (C-E) values has been found to be 1.1% for HELIOS and for CASMO-4, and 1.3% for MCNP4B. For C8, the rms values of the (C-E) distributions are 1.0, 1.3, and 1.4% as obtained with HELIOS, CASMO-4, and MCNP4B, respectively. The effects of using different data libraries (ENDF/B-V, ENDF/B-VI, and JEF-2.2) with MCNP4B were also studied and have been found to be small.