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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.
D. Yuan, P. Guss, T. Ashenfelter
Nuclear Technology | Volume 177 | Number 2 | February 2012 | Pages 273-284
Technical Paper | Radiation Measurements and General Instrumentation | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A13371
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Past studies of wavelet technologies for gamma spectral analysis essentially focused on direct fitting of raw gamma spectra, but these studies often failed to produce new benefits for operational adaptation of wavelet analysis. This paper presents a modified wavelet approach with the objective being detecting only the nuclides that do not exist in the environmental background. With this operational objective, wavelet analysis is applied to the background-subtracted count-rate spectra. A preliminary comparison study suggests that this background subtraction - wavelet-fitting process - is independent of the detector type and background radiation and is capable of improving the wavelet peak detection probabilities as compared with earlier published results.