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.
Tom Burr, Michael S. Hamada
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 177 | Number 3 | July 2014 | Pages 307-320
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE13-86
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The time series of material balances in nuclear material accounting (NMA) is also known as the material unaccounted for (MUF) sequence. This paper applies a joint cusum test to residual time series from NMA that arise from either of two options. The first residual series is the standardized, independently transformed MUF (SITMUF) sequence that relies on an estimate of Σ, the MUF covariance matrix. The second residual series arises from using either time series modeling or nonparametric smoothing on the MUF sequence and ignores the estimate of Σ. Assuming that the MUF sequence is multivariate Gaussian and ignoring estimation error in Σ, we find the anticipated result that the first option is superior to the second option. In addition, we find that the SITMUF scheme in the first option is robust to modest estimation error in Σ over a large number of idealized facilities, but not necessarily so for any specific idealized facility. These two findings provide a perspective on previous literature that addressed a perceived weakness in NMA.