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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.
M. M. R. Williams
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 160 | Number 2 | October 2008 | Pages 253-260
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE160-253
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The resonance integrals and associated temperature coefficients in a mixture of graphite and randomly dispersed grains of ThO2 are calculated. Two methods of dealing with the random distribution of grains are used. The first is one developed by Lane, Nordheim, and Sampson, which is based upon a random Dancoff factor, and the second uses the dichotomic Markov process. The numerical results are compared for a range of grain sizes and ranges of temperature. The differences in the two methods do not exceed 4% for resonance integrals and 2.5% for temperature coefficients. Bearing in mind the radically different stochastic procedures involved, it is remarkable and useful to know that the results are so insensitive to the stochastic model used. In addition we give a measure of the variance in the results.
