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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
François Bachoc, Karim Ammar, Jean-Marc Martinez
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 183 | Number 3 | July 2016 | Pages 387-406
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE15-108
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
It is now common practice in nuclear engineering to base extensive studies on numerical computer models. These studies require running computer codes in potentially thousands of numerical configurations and without expert individual controls on the computational and physical aspects of each simulation. In this paper, we compare different statistical metamodeling techniques and show how metamodels can help improve the global behavior of codes in these extensive studies. We consider the metamodeling of the Germinal thermomechanical code by Kriging, kernel regression, and neural networks. Kriging provides the most accurate predictions, while neural networks yield the fastest metamodel functions. All three metamodels can conveniently detect strong computation failures. However, it is more challenging to detect code instabilities, that is, groups of computations that are all valid but numerically inconsistent with one another. For code instability detection, we find that Kriging provides an interesting tool.