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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.
Olin W. Calvin, Barry D. Ganapol, R. A. Borrelli
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 4 | April 2023 | Pages 558-588
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2129950
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper introduces and evaluates the Adding and Doubling Method (ADM) for solving the Bateman equations for depletion systems with varying numbers of nuclides and compares it to the Chebyshev Rational Approximation Method (CRAM), both implemented in the reactor physics analysis application Griffin. ADM, when applied to the Crank-Nicolson Finite Difference method, can produce results comparable in accuracy and precision to CRAM with comparable run times for systems with 35 or 297 nuclides. For systems with more than 300 nuclides, the matrix-matrix operations required by ADM are significantly more costly than the matrix-vector operations required by CRAM, making CRAM the more efficient method for systems with large numbers of nuclides. ADM is an accurate method that maintains other advantages over CRAM in that it does not depend on pre-generated coefficients or require complex number operations. ADM also manages to outperform CRAM by a factor of more than 250 in terms of run time for depletion systems that require multiple Bateman solves while the depletion matrix and time step size remain constant over all depletion intervals.