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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.
Budhi Sagar, Paul W. Eslinger, Robert G. Baca
Nuclear Technology | Volume 75 | Number 3 | December 1986 | Pages 338-349
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT86-A33846
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Estimation of potential radionuclide releases from the waste package subsystem of a nuclear waste repository is required for two reasons: (a) to judge whether the engineered barrier system complies with the performance regulations prescribed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission; and (b) to provide radionuclide source terms needed to predict the isolation performance of the natural barriers (i.e., geologic medium), which must be compared with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency safety standard. A probabilistic approach developed at the Basalt Waste Isolation Project (BWIP) for the estimation of radionuclide releases from a proposed nuclear waste repository in basalt is presented. The central idea of this approach is that uncertainties in both the radionuclide transport parameters and the random nature of container failures impact the estimation of release rates. Details of the method are provided that account for both sources of uncertainty. Sample applications are presented that are based on preliminary data. Briefly, the BWIP methodology consists of (a) a container corrosion model, (b) a model describing the random sequence of container failures in time, (c) a stochastic transport model to obtain the probability distribution of releases from a single container failing at a specified time, and (d) a model to integrate the releases from the randomly failing containers in the repository.