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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
Athena A. Sagadevan, Sunil S. Chirayath
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 10 | October 2022 | Pages 1511-1521
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2057775
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
It has become a common practice to store sufficiently cooled spent nuclear fuel (SNF) assemblies in interim storage dry casks with passive cooling. These dry casks require nuclear safeguards monitoring because they contain plutonium. Past studies on dry cask modeling and simulations have shown that a remote monitoring system (RMS) situated inside the dry cask could continually monitor and detect the removal of even a single SNF assembly from the cask. This conceptual RMS design was tested by conducting laboratory-scale experiments using small-size 252Cf neutron sources. These small-size sources were surrounded by neutron-reflecting materials in the experiments to mimic the SNF assemblies as a surface neutron source to the fission chamber detectors of the RMS. Experimental and simulation results showed that the removal or diversion of even a single neutron source is detectable within 4 min with a probability of detection greater than 80%.