Abstract
Nuclear data evaluation is an independent century-long expert activity accompanying the development of the nuclear physics science. Its goal is to produce periodic surveys of the world literature in order to recommend and maintain the set of the best nuclear data parameters of common use in all basic and applied sciences. After WWII the effort extended and while it became more international it continued to be supported mainly by the US for the benefit of the whole world. The Evaluated Nuclear Structure Data File (ENSDF) is the most comprehensive nuclear structure database worldwide maintained by the United States National Nuclear Data Center(NNDC)at Brookhaven National Laboratory(BNL)and echoed by the IAEA Vienna Nuclear Data Services. Part of the US Nuclear Data Program since 2005 the Cyclotron Institute is one of the important contributors to ENSDF. Since 2018 we became an international evaluation center working in a consortium of peers hosted traditionally by prestigious national institutes as well as universities. In this paper the main stages of the evaluation work are presented in order to facilitate a basic understanding of the process as a guide for our potential users. Our goals are to maintain a good productivity vs. quality performance assuring the currency of the data and participating in the effort of modernizing the structure of ENSDF databases in order to make them compatible with the data-centric paradigms of the future.
Highlights
Nuclear data evaluation fills a century-long chapter of nuclear science
A search in the Nuclear Science Reference (NSR) database maintained at the National Nuclear Data Center (NNDC) on the author M
In 1964 the Nuclear Data Project moved to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge Tennessee following the need to embed the data program in an active physics research environment, making nuclear data evaluation a basic science domain
Summary
Nuclear data evaluation fills a century-long chapter of nuclear science. A search in the Nuclear Science Reference (NSR) database maintained at the National Nuclear Data Center (NNDC) (https://www.nndc.bnl.gov/nsr/) on the author M. In 1948 she founded the Nuclear Data Project at the U.S National Bureau of Standards, which in 1950 published the first Nuclear Data Report. In 1964 the Nuclear Data Project moved to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge Tennessee following the need to embed the data program in an active physics research environment, making nuclear data evaluation a basic science domain. In February 1966 the first issue of the Nuclear Data Sheets in a journal format. The main evaluation work was organized in the frame of the Nuclear Data Project (NDP) at ORNL where the data were still entered by hand directly on sheets of paper with drawings done by hand, which were typed and photographed together with the professional draftsman redrawings in order to generate the the final publishable version. A. (Libby) McCutchan, took over upon Tuli’s retirement in April, 2016, with NNDC still being the most prominent evaluation center in the US and abroad [4]
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