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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.
Ki-Yong Ra, Byong-Whi Lee, Soon-Heung Chang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 101 | Number 2 | February 1993 | Pages 149-158
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT93-A34776
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
With most of the current probabilistic safety criteria (PSCs), it is difficult to select a unanimously acceptable single-point safety goal and to evaluate the uncertainties in the results of a probabilistic safety assessment (PSA). A new PSC is proposed, in which the distribution of the public’s safety goals (DPSG) is used as a benchmark for evaluating the results of a PSA rather than a single-point safety goal. With this approach, the DPSG and the uncertainties in the results of a PSA can be handled properly so as to give a clear answer of “how much of the public feels a nuclear reactor is safe” to the question of “How safe is safe enough?” The proposed PSC is compared with the current PSCs and the expected utility model. If the actual DPSG is unavailable or difficult to obtain directly, a lognormal distribution is recommended as an appropriate DPSG for core melt frequencies in terms of maximizing entropy and minimizing total social cost. The proposed DPSG and PSC for core melt frequency are applied to the results of NUREG-1150.