EPJ Web of Conferences 146, 02041 (2017)
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201714602041

Preparing for ENDF/B-VIII

Brookhaven National Laboratory, National Nuclear Data Center, Upton NY, USA

^a e-mail: dbrown@bnl.gov

Published online: 13 September 2017

Abstract

Although the next major release of the ENDF/B library is not due until the 2017–2018 time frame, ENDF/B-VIII is already positioned to become the most important release of the library in some time. ENDF/B-VIII will be built around the Neutron Reaction Standards as well as the ¹H, ¹⁶O, ⁵⁶Fe, ²³⁵U, ²³⁸U and ²³⁹Pu evaluations developed as part of the Coordinated International Evaluation Library Organization (CIELO) pilot project. In this contribution, we summarize these improvements as well as the many other improvements to ENDF that have already been made or are scheduled to be made in the next year. Improvements already included in the ENDF/B-VIII beta releases: • Aggressive use of the flexible and physically correct LRF=7 resolved resonance format in 12 updated evaluations (^35,37Cl, ⁴⁰Ca, ^54,56,57Fe, ^63,65Cu and ^{182,183,184,186}W) • Thermal capture gammas from the EGAF project (^6,7Li, ¹¹B, ¹⁹F, ²³Na, ²⁷Al, ²⁸Si, ^35,37Cl) • Thermal Scattering Law evaluations from NCSU (α and β phase SiO₂, SiC, lucite, BeO, and polyethylene) and from the CAB-CNL collaboration (heavy and light water) • Many new evaluations in the neutron sublibrary (n, ^12,13C, ⁴⁰Ar, ^54,57,58Fe, ^{58,59,60,61,62,64}Ni, ^63,65Cu, ⁷³As, ¹²⁰Sn, ^236m1Np) Inclusion of Red Cullen's EPICS2014 library, updating the photo-atomic, electron and atomic-relaxation sublibraries. Many improvements are planned in the next year including new evaluations such as charged particle evaluations translated from LLNL's ECPL. In addition to these major changes, ENDF/B-VIII will be the first official library released simultaneously in the legacy ENDF-6 and the newly developed Generalized Nuclear Data (GND) formats.