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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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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.
Technical Session|Panel|Sponsored by HFICD
Tuesday, June 18, 2024|1:00–2:45PM PDT|Jasmine H
Session Chair:
Lee Maccarone (Sandia)
Alternate Chair:
Edward L. Quinn
Session Organizer:
Jamie B. Coble
This panel will summarize an ongoing body of DOE' supported research and development efforts to provide the Nuclear Power industry with implementation and approaches to leverage advanced cybersecurity technologies for safety systems within nuclear power plants (NPPs). Digital technologies play a critical role in ensuring the reliable operation of safety systems in NPPs. Current cybersecurity regulations for operating NPPs, typically result a high reliance on hardened and secure boundaries to prevent adversary access to safety systems. The summarized research efforts detail approaches for leveraging commercial advanced cybersecurity technologies to provide sufficient inherent cybersecurity to reduce reliance on these hardened and secured boundaries. These research efforts consist of experiments that demonstrate novel approaches aimed at reducing functional (e.g., latency, reliability) and licensing impacts to safety systems through application of secure elements and other cybersecurity technologies (e.g, network monitoring, AI, ML) common in other industries. These efforts aim to support all reactor types, including domestic light water reactors, advanced reactors, small modular reactors, and microreactors. Specifically, innovation in the use of advanced cybersecurity technologies to enable several desired advances in safety systems (e.g., remote communications, monitoring, active defense), significant to advanced and small modular reactors. These reactor types will require advanced cybersecurity technologies to provide robust cryptographic mechanisms, intrusion detection and response, to defend the confidentiality and integrity necessary for remote multi-unit monitoring, reduction in sustaining costs, and enable scale-up of operations to meet domestic and international green energy and production goals, for the next generation of safety systems.
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