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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
J. W. Kim, T. C. W. Wong, F. K. W. Tang, A. Reid
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 4 | November 2011 | Pages 1427-1430
Detritiation and Isotope Separation | Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12699
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For safe and efficient operation of the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station's Tritium Removal Facility (DTRF), it is necessary to track the amount of operational tritium inventory within the DTRF's process systems. Previous methodology that tracks operational tritium inventory is based on performing a tritium mass balance and does not provide an instantaneous way to determine inventory in the DTRF. The estimate of operational tritium inventory using this method is susceptible to increasing cumulative error of approximately ±2.6% per day as the DTRF continues to operate. Current methodology attempts to compensate for this cumulative error by assuming a constant value for operational tritium inventory whenever Mass 5 is detected by mass spectroscopy of tritium drawoff gas. However, this assumption is flawed and introduces significant error to the estimation of operational tritium inventory. A new method based on temperature of the cryogenic high tritium distillation (HTD) process is proposed which can track operational tritium inventory in a more instantaneous fashion and provides a result with a constant error of ±14% that does not increase over time.