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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.
Richard Sanchez, Norman J. McCormick
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 147 | Number 3 | July 2004 | Pages 249-274
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE04-A2432
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The limitations of asymptotic methods for numerically solving highly forward peaked scattering (HFPS) problems are reviewed before resorting to a discrete ordinates solution for such problems based on biased angular quadrature formulas to increase the precision of the angular representation and on source evaluation from cell-averaged angular fluxes to reduce memory requirements. Also, a twice-collided source is introduced to avoid numerical representation of singularities in the solution. As an example the propagation and spreading of a collimated particle beam in an HFPS medium has been calculated with a discrete ordinates diamond-differenced numerical solution of the transport equation in two-dimensional curvilinear cylindrical coordinates. The calculation was carried out for a strongly forward peaked Henyey-Greenstein scattering law for which Fokker-Planck asymptotic models are not valid. The results show promise for numerically calculated reference solutions based on accurate spatial representations for checking the accuracy of standard asymptotic models for these types of problems.