ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Jul 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
August 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
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.
Mihály Makai
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 82 | Number 3 | December 1982 | Pages 338-353
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE82-338
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Solving problems of reactor physics is well developed for typical pressurized water and boiling water reactor geometries but less developed for high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, liquid-metal fast breeder reactor, and WWER (BBP) geometries. Several problems of reactor physics can be formulated in a geometry-independent fashion with the help of symmetry considerations, which allows the solution to be decomposed into eigenfunctions of the symmetry operations. An analytic coarse-mesh solution is derived without resorting to the cross leakage concept. The method is applicable to arbitrary geometries. A second-stage homogenization based on the Bloch theorem is presented. It is shown that the solution of the transport equation can always be made up from a cell problem set (microfunctions) and from an overall solution to the diffusion equation (macrofunction).