nuclear data

{{Short description|Probabilities of interactions involving atomic nuclei}}

{{For|the defunct company|Nuclear Data, Inc.}}

Nuclear data represents measured (or evaluated) probabilities of various physical interactions involving the nuclei of atoms. It is used to understand the nature of such interactions by providing the fundamental input to many models and simulations, such as fission and fusion reactor calculations, shielding and radiation protection calculations, criticality safety, nuclear weapons, nuclear physics research, medical radiotherapy, radioisotope therapy and diagnostics, particle accelerator design and operations, geological and environmental work, radioactive waste disposal calculations, and space travel calculations.

It groups all experimental data relevant for nuclear physics and nuclear engineering. It includes a large number of physical quantities, like scattering and reaction cross sections (which are generally functions of energy and angle), nuclear structure and nuclear decay parameters, etc. It can involve neutrons, protons, deuterons, alpha particles, and virtually all nuclear isotopes which can be handled in a laboratory.

There are two major reasons to need high-quality nuclear data: theoretical model development of nuclear physics, and applications involving radiation and nuclear power. There is often an interplay between these two aspects, since applications often motivate research in particular theoretical fields, and theory can be used to predict quantities or phenomena which can lead to new or improved technological concepts.{{cite journal|last1=Aliberti|first1=G.|last2=Palmiotti|first2=G.|last3=Salvatores|first3=M.| last4=Kim|first4=T.K.|last5=Taiwo|first5=T.A.|last6=Anitescu|first6=M.|last7=Kodeli|first7=I.|last8=Sartori|first8=E.|last9=Bosq|first9=J.C.|last10=Tommasi|first10=J.|title=Nuclear data sensitivity, uncertainty and target accuracy assessment for future nuclear systems|journal=Annals of Nuclear Energy |volume=33|issue=8|pages=700–733|year=2006|doi=10.1016/j.anucene.2006.02.003|url=http://www.mcs.anl.gov/events/workshops/nprcsafc/Info%20Documents/Workshop_August_Doc3_Annals_paper-1.pdf|accessdate=2018-06-07}}

Nuclear Data Evaluations

To ensure a level of quality required to protect the public, experimental nuclear data results are occasionally evaluated by a Nuclear Data Organization to form a nuclear data library. These organizations review multiple measurements and agree upon the highest-quality measurements before publishing the libraries. For unmeasured or very complex data regimes, the parameters of nuclear models are adjusted until the resulting data matches well with critical experiments. The result of an evaluation is almost universally stored as a set of data files in Evaluated Nuclear Data File (ENDF) format. To keep the size of these files reasonable, they contain a combination of actual data tables and resonance parameters that can be reconstructed into pointwise data with specialized tools (such as [https://njoy.github.io/ NJOY]).

=Nuclear Data Organizations=

Releases of ENDF/B Files

The historical releases of ENDF/B files are summarized below.

class="wikitable"
File versionRelease Date{{cite web|last1=Oblozinsky|first1=Pavel|title=Nuclear Data: New ENDF/B-VII Library |publisher=Brookhaven National Laboratory|date=August 10, 2006|url=https://www.mcs.anl.gov/events/workshops/nprcsafc/Presentations/Oblozinsky%20afc-1%20plenary.pdf|accessdate=2014-07-01}}
ENDF/B-I1968
ENDF/B-II1970
ENDF/B-III1972
ENDF/B-IV1974
ENDF/B-V1978
ENDF/B-VI1990
ENDF/B-VII2006
ENDF/B-VII.1

|2011{{cite journal|last1=Oblozinsky|first1=Pavel|title=Special Issue on ENDF/B-VII.1 Library|journal=Nuclear Data Sheets|date=December 2011 |url=http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00903752/112/12}}

ENDF/B-VIII2018{{cite journal|last1=Brown|first1=David|title=ENDF/B-VIII.0|journal=Cross Section Evaluation Working Group (CSEWG) Announcement, Brookhaven National Laboratory|date=February 2, 2018 |url=https://ndclx4.bnl.gov/gf/project/endf/news/?id=45|accessdate=2018-02-19}}

The historical releases of JEFF files are summarized below.

class="wikitable"
File versionRelease Date{{cite web|url=http://www.oecd-nea.org/dbdata/jeff/|title=NEA JEFF page|access-date=2019-08-12}}
JEF-2.21992
JEFF-3.02002
JEFF-3.12005
JEFF-3.1.12009
JEFF-3.1.22011
JEFF-3.22014
JEFF-3.32017

See also

References

{{Reflist}}

Data, nuclear