The NEA High Priority Nuclear Data Request List for future needs

Abstract

The Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) established the Working Party on Evaluation Co-operation (WPEC) to promote exchange of information on nuclear data activities by its members. One of the WPEC objectives is to assess needs for nuclear data improvements and to stimulate initiatives to fulfill these. The High Priority Request List (HPRL) was established in pursuit of this objective. The HPRL project aims at identifying accuracy targets for the improvement of nuclear data, primarily for application in the nuclear industry. The list therefore provides a guide for those planning new measurements, nuclear model calculations and data evaluation programmes. Since 2004, the HPRL has undergone a major overhaul to better guarantee timeliness and adequate documentation of requests. A new webpage was developed at the NEA to facilitate submission of new requests, and to allow easy inspection. Submitted requests are first reviewed by external referees, before being accepted on the list. Requests are divided into high priority requests, where a quantitative justification is provided and general requests for which the justification is qualitative. The relevance of requests for nuclear energy applications is ensured through periodic reviews by an expert group of the NEA WPEC, involving Europe (JEFF), Japan (JENDL), the United States (ENDF), Russia (BROND) and China (CENDL). The new procedures for submission, review and adoption of requests were recently validated with a first set of entries. Examples of recent updates to the HPRL project are presented. The requirements for providing new requests are also presented, as well as how to justify needs for new nuclear data. Data users around the world are encouraged to formulate their concerns about nuclear data and submit them to the HPRL. The HPRL is maintained by the NEA Data Bank and can be consulted at the following address: http://www.nea.fr/html/dbdata/hprl/.