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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!
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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.
International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference
Workshop
Wednesday, November 16, 2022|4:30–6:30PM MST|Honeysuckle
START is a web-GIS transportation decision-support tool developed by DOE’s Office of Integrated Waste Management (IWM) to enable visualization and analyses of geospatial data relevant to planning and operating a large-scale spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste transportation system. IWM is using START in a variety of applications, including: 1) assessing modal and routing options and associated risks, 2) evaluating emergency response training needs along routes, 3) providing enhanced stakeholder communication through maps and other visualizations, 4) performing environmental analyses including incident-free and incident-caused SNF transport dose estimates, and 5) supporting the integration of transportation logistics within analyses of the overall waste management system. START’s ease-of-use and flexibility has made it an ideal environment for users to perform “what-if” scenarios and to assess performance tradeoffs associated with various transportation alternatives. Moreover, users can download maps and analysis results as stand-alone graphical, geospatial, or tabular products or for inclusion in other reports or studies. This short course will demonstrate START’s capabilities within the context of presenting the tool’s underlying data and analysis functions, present sample START use-cases, and share information on further enhancements that are under development.
Those who choose to do so should bring a laptop to the course so that they can use the tool interactively during the session.
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