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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.
David C. Wade, Edward K. Fujita
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 103 | Number 2 | October 1989 | Pages 182-195
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE89-6
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Favorable passive reactivity shutdown performance in response to unprotected accident initiators has been shown to be achievable when several measurable, integral reactivity parameters related to the power, flow, and inlet temperature coefficients of reactivity satisfy certain simple constraints among their dimensionless ratios. The trends in these dimensionless ratios with reactor size for both oxide- and metal-fueled cores have been developed, based on a data base of ∼24 reactor designs in the range from 400 to 3600 MW(thermal). Based on the trends, it is possible to conclude that the favorable passive reactivity shutdown features that accrue to the metallic-fueled reactors in the mod-ular-size range can be achieved as well in the larger commercial sizes.