NEA Data Bank
Le Seine St-Germain
12, boulevard des Iles
92130 Issy-les-Moulineaux
FRANCE
Email: exfor@nea.fr
or cinda@nea.fr

DATE:
TO:
FROM:
SUBJECT:

Tel: +33 (0) 1 45 24 10 84
Fax: +33 (0) 1 45 24 11 28

MEMO CP-N/62
14 September 2007
See distribution list below
A. Hasegawa, H. Henriksson
NEA Progress Report, 2006-2007

Dear colleagues,
The NEA Progress report is attached in this memo to be presented at the NRDC meeting
8-10 October 2007.

Distribution:
HUNGARY
s.takacs@atomki.hu
tarkanyi@atomki.hu
INDIA
ganesan@magnum.barc.ernet.inJAPANchiba@earth.sgu.ac.jp
katakura.junichi@jaea.go.jp
kato@nucl.sci.hokudai.ac.jp
ohnishi@nucl.sci.hokudai.ac.jp
ohtsuka@nucl.sci.hokudai.ac.jp
KOREA (REPUBLIC OF)
yolee@kaeri.re.kr
P.R. OF CHINA
gezg@ciae.ac.cn
hongwei@ciae.ac.cn
zhuangyx@ciae.ac.cn

RUSSIAN FEDERATION
chukreev@polyn.kiae.su
blokhin@ippe.obninsk.ru
samaev@obninsk.ru
manokhin@ippe.obninsk.ru
mmarina@ippe.obninsk.ru
taova@expd.vniief.ru
varlamov@depni.sinp.msu.ru
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
mwherman@bnl.gov
oblozinsky@bnl.gov
International Organisations
S.Dunaeva@iaea.org
a.mengoni@iaea.org
a.l.nichols@iaea.org
schwerer@iaeand.iaea.or.at
v.zerkin@iaea.org
hasegawa@nea.fr
henriksson@nea.fr
claes.nordborg@oecd.org
nicolas.soppera@oecd.org

PROGRESS REPORT FROM THE
OECD/NEA DATA BANKAt the NRDC meeting at IAEA, Vienna, Austria
8-10 October2007
NEA Web page: www.nea.fr
Contact: db@nea.fr

General overview
The Data Bank’s primary role is to provide scientists in member countries with reliable
differential and integral nuclear data and computer programs for use in different nuclear
applications. The services include also thermochemical data for radioactive waste management
applications. The Data Bank organises seminars and workshops to present computer programsor groups of programs that are of special interest to users. Training courses on widely used
computer programs are organised a few times a year to ensure a correct and effective use of
these programs. The Data Bank member countries are: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic,
Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea,
Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland,
Turkey, and United Kingdom. Users of the Data Bank services include governmental research
institutes, industry and universities.
The total number of full time staff in the NEA Data Bank is 15. This is divided into 8
professional staff and 7 support staff. However, only 5 professional and 6 support staff workwith the Data Bank services. The remaining staff is allocated to work in other activities in the
NEA.
The annual meeting of the Data Bank management committee (the NEA Nuclear Science
Committee Executive Group) was held in June 2007. The main discussion concerned future
directions of the NEA Data Bank and general views on how to maintain high quality services
to member countries. A secretary for the head of the Data Bank, Roopa Chauhan, has been
appointed, while Federico Mompean has left the TDB project and the NEA.
The compilation of experimental data into the EXFOR database has progressed asplanned with 58 new neutron induced data sets and 67 new charged-particle induced data setsentered since the last NRDC meeting. The CINDA database, containing bibliographic
information, has been updated and was published in 7 volumes (in total 5400 pages) as anarchival book in September 2007. It was distributed worldwide to about 250 libraries, researchfacilities and nuclear data centres.
The JANIS nuclear data display software has been upgraded and a beta version was
released in April 2007. The official version of JANIS-3 was released in June 2007 after further
checking of the software. It is now a much appreciated tool for nuclear data users, with over
25 000 accesses per month to the NEA databases containing nuclear data.

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The high priority request list for nuclear data, within the Working Party on international
nuclear data Evaluation Cooperation (WPEC), has been updated and contains now 5 highpriority requests and 6 general requests. The requests are divided into ‘general’ and ‘highpriority’, and the rules for ‘general’ requests to be accepted have been relaxed so as to admit
more of this type. A new WPEC subgroup (number 30 in the series) was formed to deal with the“Quality assessment and improvement of usability of the experimental database EXFOR” incollaboration with the NRDC.
A validation report of JEFF-3.1, JEFF Report 22, is being prepared and the structure of
the report has been decided. The plan for the next nuclear data library, JEFF-3.2, was outlined,with new evaluations being prepared on 235,238U, 239Pu, Cr, Mn, Ta and W, as well as a newactivation data library. The new library is planned to include more covariance data as well as
photonuclear data. A revision of the decay data library, JEFF-3.1.1, was also agreed for releasein autumn 2007.
The current phase of the Thermochemical Database (TDB) project has been prolonged
until 31 January 2008, and a fourth phase, TDB IV, will start on February 1, 2008. Tenvolumes have so far been published in the series of reviews and the work in present phase of
the TDB project is concentrating on finalising the three reviews on Thorium, Tin and Iron. The
first of these reviews is planned for publication in 2007, the latter two in 2008.
The collaboration with the US-DOE on computer code exchange was recently restarted
with 20 codes received and 62 codes distributed. Several training courses have been carried out
and recently, courses on MCNPX and SCALE-5 (TRITON) were organised at the NEA.
Nuclear Data Services
The nuclear data services are mainly provided through direct on-line access to the
CINDA, EXFOR and EVA databases containing bibliographic, experimental and evaluatednuclear data respectively. Access to all the databases is open and free of charge. See Table 1
for the numbers of retrievals of some services from the web pages during 2006. Figure 1 shows
what kind of reaction data users are requesting. Data in the figure is based on the use of thedisplay tool JANIS.
In addition to these on-line services, the Data Bank also answers specific requests from
customers. Normally, this concerns requests for very large datasets, which are too large fordirect Internet download. The very large datasets are normally distributed on CD-ROM orDVD. Providing advice to nuclear data users is another important part of the nuclear dataservices.

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Table 1. Web retrievals 2006 from the NEA Data Bank.Number of accesses (Note, JEFF
documents are password protected)

2006

Web page
EVA searches

8 017

EVA downloads

56 150JEFF documents*

30 242EXFOR searches

11 563EXFOR downloads

18 698JANIS

361 770

CINDA

1 388

Other web pages at the Data Bank

139 471

EXFOR and CINDA compilation
More than 100 new neutron reaction experiments and about 160 charged particle experiments
have been entered by the Data Bank into the EXFOR database since the beginning of 2006 (seeTable 2). The database is updated continuously and the delay between article publication andinclusion in EXFOR has been reduced.
Table 2 EXFOR compilations from the NEA (area 2 and O) during 2006 and Jan-Aug 2007

AREA 2
2006

2007

Trans
2174
2175
2176
2177

No of works
17
18
11
10

2178
2179
2180
2181
2182
2183
2184
2185

6
6
11
11
12
3
6
3

Total

114

AREA O
2006

2007

4

Trans
o024
o025
o026
o027
o028
o029
o030

No of works
9
17
69
13
19
15
20

Total

162

Fig 1. Requested data categories in JANIS. Cross section data is for example total crosssections and ENDF, MF=3 data, differential data is angular or energy distributions, andnuclear properties are data from Nubase.

The CINDA database has been subject to a major extension due to the new format, including
the insertion of charged particle references from the EXFOR database. The new CINDA
database has been tested and adopted at the NEA.
The CINDA database is available on DVD as part of the JANIS package, and also on-line
through the Web. Due to a certain demand and the extension of CINDA to include charged
particle data, the NEA has decided to produce an archive version of the CINDA Book, lastissued in 1990. The new CINDA 2006 archive version was printed in September 2007.
The data display tool JANISThe nuclear data display software, JANIS (JAva Nuclear Information System), developed at
the NEA Data Bank, has been available for all interested users free of charge since its firstrelease in 2001. JANIS accesses locally stored, as well as remote, ENDF formatted evaluateddata and experimental data from the EXFOR database. A new version of JANIS (JANIS-3.0)
was released in June 2007. That version incorporates the full CINDA database as well as thecomplete EXFOR database read in the original EXFOR format. Many features related to theplotting of data have also been added and ameliorated since the previous version, such as thepossibility to use dotted lines or different line thickness in the graphs. The plots and nuclide
charts can easily be exported as image files (or Windows Meta-files).
The program is free of charge and can be downloaded or launched using ‘JAVA Web Start’
from the JANIS home page: http://www.nea.fr/janis, where the complete manual can be foundas well. Over 25 000 JANIS requests per month for data from the NEA databases areregistered in the log files. One such request can cover one EXFOR subentry, or a full evaluatedlibrary. See Fig. 2 for the evolution of JANIS retrievals over time since January 2004.

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60 000

Database Requests / month

50 00040 000JANIS 3JANIS 3βJANIS 2.2.2
JANIS 2.2.1
JANIS 2.2
JANIS 2.1
JANIS 2.0

30 000

20 000

10 0000
Jan-04

Jul-04Jan-05Jul-05Jan-06

Jul-06

Jan-07

Jul-07

Date

Figure 2 JANIS statistics, January 2004 – April 2007, with the different versions indicated aswell. From version 2.2.1 JANIS includes the Web retrieval plotting facility. JANIS-3β was atest version released for the nuclear data conference ND-2007 in Nice, France in April 2007.

The Joint Evaluated Fission and Fusion (JEFF) Project and JEFF-3.1
The JEFF-3.1 Nuclear Data Library is the latest version of the Joint Evaluated Fission and
Fusion Library. The complete suite of data was released in May 2005, and contains general
purpose nuclear data evaluations compiled at the NEA Data Bank in co-operation with several
laboratories in the Data Bank member countries. Processed data for Monte Carlo code
applications was made available in spring 2006, and the full documentation of JEFF-3.1, JEFF
Report 21, was published in November 2006.
The NEA High Priority Request List (HPRL)The NEA Data Bank is assisting the Nuclear Science section Working Party on international
nuclear data Evaluation Cooperation (WPEC) to manage the High Priority Request List
(HPRL), which is a compilation of the highest priority nuclear data requirements, primarily for
application in the nuclear industry. The purpose of the list is to provide a guide for thoseplanning measurements, exploring nuclear theory, and requesting high precision evaluated data
for the projects. The HPRL is a place where data users meet data producers. Five high priority
requests have been accepted after peer review by the HPRL reviewing procedure, and six
general requests were also accepted. All requests need to be tied to a certain project. The list is
maintained by the NEA Data Bank and is presented at: http://www.nea.fr/html/dbdata/hprl/
Computer Program Services
A large set of computer programs shared by member countries has been acquired, It covers awide scope from basic nuclear cross section calculations to full nuclear power plant analysis.
Every year about 60 new or revised versions of computer codes are added. The computer6

program services distributes more than 2000 documented software packages and group crosssection data sets per year. The activity includes collection of programs, compilation andverification, using quality assurance methods, in an appropriate computer environment, and theverification that the computer program package is complete and adequately documented (seewww.nea.fr/html/dbprog).

Data from Integral Experiments
Under the guidance of the NEA Nuclear Science Committee (NSC), the Data Bank preserves
data from integral experiments to assist users in having well documented information available
for benchmark testing, especially in the context of the development of future nuclear energy
systems. Integral experimental data with benchmark quality have been compiled, reviewed andpublished. The most relevant ones for nuclear data are:- International Criticality Safety Benchmark Experiments (ICSBEP)- Radiation Shielding and Dosimetry Benchmark Experiments (SINBAD)- International Reactor Physics Experiments Evaluations (IRPhE).
A large number of these evaluated experiments were distributed in recent years in support ofnuclear data and computer code validation.
NEA Data Bank workshops, training courses & tutorials 2006-2007
The NEA Data Bank organises and participates in seminars and workshops to present
information on computer programs or groups of programs that are considered to be of special
interest to users. Training courses on widely used computer programs are organised a few
times a year to ensure a correct and effective use of them. Training courses are organised in thecontext of the Data Bank knowledge transfer and preservation effort. Each course is attended
by between 15 and 30 participants and is financially self-supporting through the fees paid by
them. The classes are taught by the authors of the computer codes. Participants gain hands onexperience and acquire competence in the use of the codes for problem solving. Such classes
can be at three different levels: introductory, intermediate and advanced. The training courses
and workshops held recently are listed below.
September 2006, PHYSOR-2006-Topical Meeting on Advances in Nuclear Analysis andSimulation, Hyatt Regency Vancouver
September 2006, Workshop on Use of Monte Carlo Techniques for Design and Analysis of
Radiation Detectors, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal
September 2006, 9th Information Exchange Meeting on Actinide and Fission ProductPartitioning and Transmutation (co-organised NSC/NDC), Nîmes, France
October 2006, Training Course on MCNP5 Coupled Neutron, Electron Gamma 3-D TimeDependent Monte Carlo Transport Calculations, ITN Sacavém, Lisbon, Portugal
November 2006, Journées "codes de calcul en radioprotection, radiophysique et dosimétrie",
INSTN, Saclay, France
November 2006, NJOY users group meeting, NEA Headquarters, Issy-les-Moulineaux, France
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November 2006, Training Course on Monte Carlo Simulation, Universidad Internacional deAndalucía, Baeza (Jaén), Spain
March 2007, MCNP5 Introductory Class, with additional topics in advanced geometry &criticality, University of Pisa, Italy,
September 2007, MCNPX Intermediate Class, OECD NEA Data Bank, Issy-les-Moulineaux,FranceSeptember 2007, SCALE / TRITON - Multidimensional Transport and Depletion Course,OECD NEA Data Bank, Issy-les-Moulineaux, France

Data Bank Publications
Some of the publications produced by the Data Bank relate to the Nuclear Science
Programme, and are presented in the progress report for that committee. Only those related to
the Data Bank programme of work are listed below. Periodic news bulletins are also sentmonthly by e-mail, or can be retrieved via the Web.
Recent publications from the NEA Data Bank
• JEFF-3.1 Nuclear Data Library (The) :JEFF Report 21• International Handbook of Evaluated Reactor Physics Benchmark Experiments (IRPhE)• Radiation Shielding and Dosimetry Database (SINBAD) (CD-ROM)• International Fuel Performance Database (IFPE) (CD-ROM)• New Editions of Computer Program Abstracts (CD-ROM))• International Evaluation Co-operation:• Vol. 7: Nuclear Data Standards• Vol. 20: Covariance Matrix Evaluation and Processing in the Resolved/Unresolved
Resonance Regions• Vol. 22: Nuclear Data for Improved LEU-LWR Reactivity Predictions• Chemical Thermodynamics of Solid Solutions of Interest in Nuclear Waste Management Volume 10 A State-of-the-art Report (2007)

Data Bank cooperation with other NEA divisions
Nuclear Science
The collaboration between the NEA Nuclear Science section and Data Bank is mainly in theareas of:• Reactor and fuel cycle physics, including reactor stability and transient calculations,
utilisation of MOX fuel and reactor-based disposition disposal of weapon-grade Pu,
nuclear criticality safety, nuclear waste transmutation studies and radiation shielding.

8•Fuel cycle chemistry covering chemical partitioning, fuel cycle flowsheet studies andseparation criteria

The Data Bank has also developed a database, called DICE, for the International Handbook of
Evaluated Criticality Safety Experiments. The most recent version of DICE was released in
September 2007.
RTFDB: Research and Test Facilities Data BaseThis project is in support of the NEA Nuclear Science Section and development by a Japanesesoftware engineering company is essentially completed. The content of the database describes
the various R&D projects in member countries. Additional authentication according to enduser category is being implemented.
Radioactive Waste Management
The Thermochemical Database (TDB) project is a co-operative effort between the NEA Data
Bank and the NEA Radioactive Waste Management Committee to produce internationally
recommended chemical thermodynamic data needed for the safety assessment of radioactive
waste disposal systems. The Project is currently supported by 17 organisations from 12 OECDmember countries. The TDB project focuses on the need to meet the specialised modelling
requirements for safety assessments of radioactive waste disposal sites. Chemical
thermodynamic data are collected and critically evaluated by review teams of experts. In 2006,
work continued on the reviews of thorium, tin and iron. The thorium report is under peer
review and is scheduled for publication in 2007. The tin and iron reports are scheduled for peer
review during 2007. A state-of-the-art report on chemical thermodynamics of solid solutions
was recently published.
During the meeting held on 26-27 October 2006 at OECD Headquarters in Paris, France, the
TDB III Management Board approved a one-year extension (from 1 February 2007 to 31
January 2008) of the current agreement and for planning to begin during 2007 for a new phaseof the TDB project and organised an ad-hoc group to study possible follow-up activities. A
new agreement for a new phase of the TDB project (TDB-IV) has now been prepared by the
NEA Secretariat, incorporating the conclusions of the ad-hoc group, and, following discussion
with potential participants in member countries, was presented and endorsed by the NSC
Executive Group, prior to the endorsement by the NEA Steering Committee in Autumn 2007.
On 16 March 2007, the RWMC endorsed the proposed programme of work for TDB IV. The
tentative start date for the new phase of the project is 1 February 2008.
Radiation Protection
The Information System on Occupational Exposure (ISOE) is a database managed at the NEA
jointly with the IAEA. ISOE provides the world’s largest database on occupational exposure at
478 commercial reactor units in 29 countries, covering some 91% of the world’s operating
commercial power reactors. Occupational exposure data collected annually from participants ismade available to ISOE members through the database. In addition to the detailed data
provided directly by participating utilities, participating authorities also contribute official
national data in cases where some of their licensees may not yet be ISOE members. The NEA
Data Bank is developing a new Internet-based system for ISOE.

9Nuclear Safety
The Data Bank is safeguarding information from a number of projects within the NEA Nuclear
Safety division, such as the OECD Piping Failure Data Exchange (OPDE) Project. The goal ofthis project is to collect and analyse piping failure event data to promote a better understandingof underlying causes, the impact on operations and safety, as well as to generate qualitative
insights into the root causes of piping failure events. The OPDE project also aims at
establishing a mechanism for efficient feedback of experience gained in connection withpiping failure phenomena, including the development of defence against their occurrence.
Changes to the NEA computer system
Upgrade to Oracle version 10g is completed. The new installation was done with Unicode
settings, allowing storage of multinational character sets required by the ISOE project. The
general structure was kept: one primary instance serving clients and one instance in standby for
failover; but the failover configuration is now provided by Oracle Dataguard. The new
installation takes also advantage of Oracle Enterprise Manager for monitoring, controlling
database instances and Dataguard operations.
Upgrades were carried out on the dual internet server system. This included both a hardware
replacement of the Dell units and the migration to the open source CENTOS which is the
publicly available version of the equivalent Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system.
The equipment used to backup the user and system files was replaced in February 2007. The
new system is composed of a cassette based backup robot for the monthly full backups and adisk based system for the daily incremental backups. Both are managed by the same software(EMC Networker) and Linux server as before.
The main Network Attached Storage (NetApp NAS) was replaced in May 2007 andconsolidation of the user and application files were subsequently consolidated on this single
file store. It is operated with a second identical system for the NEA’s office automation fileservices and they both mutually act as failover backups for one another. The current size of thestorage is 1.3 TB. A further increase in storage was done in June 2007 in order toaccommodate the present and future computer programme master file storage requirements.
The Data Bank as well as the rest of the NEA uses an open source software called‘Soupermail’ which helps set up web forms for a variety of applications. It is used forsubmitting papers to conferences, soliciting feedback, ordering products (such as JANIS),
etc… Because of the lack of robustness of this tool and the need to integrate the application
into the Data Bank’s other administrative databases, a replacement for the current software is
being developed. The new tool will enable NEA users to make up their own customized forms
and collect information as needed from external users for all the situations envisaged.

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