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.
Myoung-Suk Kang, Gyunyoung Heo, Young-Seok Lee, Hyuck Jong Kim
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 1-8
doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12397
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper surveyed the safety issues and the related engineered safety features for designing Korean demonstration fusion power plant. Since the design process was staying at a conceptual stage and regulatory requirements were not fully matured, it was significant to investigate the broad options and select feasible candidates. In order to straddle system's performance and risk, the study followed the principles of Axiomatic Design (AD) and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA). The interplay of AD and FTA facilitates developing the design of fusion power plants for enhancing performance (power generation) and reducing risk (radiation hazard). While AD is a synthesis process in the success domain to compromise functional requirements and design options in terms of a functional hierarchy tree, FTA considers a safety analysis process in the failure domain. The functional hierarchy tree, which is also named as a functional requirement and design parameter tree, showed the entire fusion power plant with multiple design candidates in a hierarchic manner. This tree can be transformed into a fault tree. While developing the fault tree, the list of DBAs which are the failure modes for the leaves of the fault tree could be recognized, and the associated engineered safety features were proposed depending on the consequences of a DBA. As a demonstration for analyzing a DBA, the mass and energy release calculation for in-vessel loss of coolant accident was described.