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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.
Yochan Kim, Jinkyun Park, Mary Presley
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 11 | November 2023 | Pages 2787-2799
PSA 2021 Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2118481
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
With the development of new digital human-machine interfaces, many discussions in the nuclear industry have focused on the human factors issues that arise from the interfaces. To quantitatively characterize the effects of the interfaces on human reliability, we collected empirical data from a full-scope simulator of the APR1400 nuclear power plant using the Human Reliability Extraction (HuREX) framework. From the numerous variables in the collected data describing the contexts of the performance influencing factors (PIFs), including crew experience, task complexity, and procedure quality, the significant variables were identified by three techniques comprising both qualitative and quantitative analyses. Based on the selected variables, the nominal error probabilities and PIF multipliers were then estimated by logistic regression analysis. This paper interprets the meanings of the estimates and discusses the advantages of the employed variable selection techniques.