Nuclear Data Needs and Capabilities for Applications

Abstract

In July 2014, DOE NP carried out a review of the US Nuclear Data Program. This led to several recommendations, including that the USNDP should “devise effective and transparent mechanisms to solicit input and feedback from all stakeholders on nuclear data needs and priorities.” The review also recommended that USNDP pursue experimental activities of relevance to nuclear data; the revised 2014 Mission Statement accordingly states that the USNDP uses “targeted experimental studies” to address gaps in nuclear data. In support of these recommendations, DOE NP requested that USNDP personnel organize a Workshop on Nuclear Data Needs and Capabilities for Applications (NDNCA). This Workshop was held at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) on 27-29 May 2015. The goal of the NDNCA Workshop was to compile nuclear data needs across a wide spectrum of applied nuclear science, and to provide a summary of associated capabilities (accelerators, reactors, spectrometers, etc.) available for the required measurements. The first two days of the workshop consisted of 25 plenary talks by speakers from 16 different institutions, on nuclear energy (NE), national security (NS), isotope production (IP), and industrial applications (IA). There were also shorter “capabilities” talks that described the experimental facilities and instrumentation available for the measurement of nuclear data. This was followed by a third day of topic-specific “breakout” sessions and a final closeout session. The agenda and copies of these talks are available online at http://bang.berkeley.edu/events/NDNCA/agenda. The importance of nuclear data to both basic and applied nuclear science was reflected in the fact that while the impetus for the workshop arose from the 2014 USNDP review, joint sponsorship for the workshop was provided by the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium, a UC-Berkeley based organization funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).