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Conference Spotlight
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.
H. Park, D. A. Knoll, C. K. Newman
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 172 | Number 1 | September 2012 | Pages 52-65
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE11-81
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We present a nonlinear acceleration algorithm for a transport criticality problem. The algorithm combines the well-known nonlinear diffusion acceleration (NDA) algorithm with a recently developed, Newton-based nonlinear criticality acceleration (NCA) algorithm. The algorithm first employs NDA to reduce the system to scalar flux, then NCA is applied to the resulting drift-diffusion system. We apply a nonlinear elimination technique to eliminate the eigenvalue constraint equation from the Jacobian matrix. Numerical results show that the algorithm can reduce the CPU time by a factor of 30 to 400 compared to traditional power iterations (PIs) combined with standard source iterations and by a factor of 3 to 5 compared to application of NDA combined with inner PIs.