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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
Hyung-Kook Joo, Temitope A. Taiwo, Won Sik Yang, Hussein S. Khalil
Nuclear Technology | Volume 161 | Number 1 | January 2008 | Pages 8-26
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3909
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An evaluation of the Compact Nuclear Power Source (CNPS) experiments conducted at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 1980s has been done using information available in the open literature. The MCNP4C Monte Carlo results for critical test configurations are in good agreement with the experimental values; the keff values are generally within 0.5% of the experimental values. The calculated total and differential rod worths and material worths were also found generally close to experimental values. These good results motivated the utilization of the experimental test data for the specification of two- and three-dimensional numerical benchmark cases that could be used for the verification and validation of core physics codes developed for Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR) analysis, particularly the deterministic lattice and whole-core physics codes. To define the benchmark cases, the irregular arrangement of channels in the actual CNPS core was simplified to a regular Cartesian geometry arrangement in the benchmark cases, while preserving the important neutronics characteristics of the CNPS. The results of deterministic calculations using the HELIOS/DIF3D code package were compared to MCNP4C results to show the usefulness of the numerical benchmark cases.
