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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.
Haluk Utku, John M. Christenson
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 116 | Number 1 | January 1994 | Pages 55-66
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE94-A21481
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The temporal subdomain method (TSM), based on a spatial finite element formulation, is investigated as a method for the solution of the space-time-dependent multigroup neutron dynamics equations. The spatial aspect of the problem was formulated as an array of finite elements by using a two-dimensional rectangular coordinate system subdivided into contiguous triangular elements. Within each element and within each neutron group, the flux was represented by a linear polynomial. Numerical experiments using a computer program developed during the course of the investigation demonstrated that the method is straightforward to implement and that it produces stable calculations for a wide range of time steps. The stability of the method has been tested for sinusoidal, ramp, and step-change reactivity insertions. The results show that the TSM outperforms most alternating direction implicit methods in the sense that a similar degree of accuracy can be achieved with larger time steps using the same number of nodes. System condition number calculations as a function of node number were also carried out for a series of static eigenvalue calculations to determine the likelihood of error propagation and the difficulty of inverting the global system matrices during the time-dependent calculations.