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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 Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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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.
Nicolas Shugart, Jeffrey King
Nuclear Technology | Volume 199 | Number 2 | August 2017 | Pages 129-150
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2017.1334435
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
SafeGuards Analysis (SGA) is a computational toolbox able to simulate different safeguards scenarios across a number of different fuel cycles and at many different scales within the MATLAB Simulink framework. SGA functions by simulating Material Balance Areas (MBAs) under safeguards materials control and accountability and allows the user to define the uncertainty parameters of the associated flow and inventory measurements. The simulated safeguard system uses the uncertain measurement estimates to calculate a mass-balance across the MBA. This mass balance is then evaluated by one of a number of different statistical tests to determine if a significant amount of material has been removed from the MBA. This paper describes the design of SGA, the results of testing each element of the toolbox, and a number of single MBA example scenarios. In all of the test cases, SGA performed as expected and produced acceptable results from the single MBA scenario.
