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Conference Spotlight
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.
Thomas J. McCarville, Gregory A. Moses, Gerald L. Kulcinski, Ihor O. Bohachevsky
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 5 | Number 1 | January 1984 | Pages 5-16
Technical Paper | Special Section Contents / ICF Chamber Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST84-A23073
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The frequency dependence of a thermal radiation field complicates the computation of radiative energy transport in optically thin media because the spectrum may be uncoupled from local thermodynamic conditions. A model for combining the effect of the frequency dependence into a radiation temperature chosen to represent the temperature of both local and nonlocal emitting regions is described. The derived equations are much easier to solve than the frequency-dependent equations and can be applied to a broad class of problems. The equations are used to investigate the response of a gas in an inertial confinement fusion (ICF) reaction chamber to target explosions. The response is compared for ambient densities of 1.77 × 1018 and 1.77 × 1017 atom/cm3. The error in using the brightness temperature instead of a color temperature to evaluate the opacities is illustrated. An analytic analysis shows the cooling wave observed from energy releases > 1018 erg will not occur in an ICF cavity. This is confirmed by the numerical calculations.
