Present Status of Neutron-, Photo-induced and Spontaneous Fission Yields Experimental Data

¹ National Nuclear Data Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973-5000, USA
² Under contract with National Nuclear Data Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973-5000, USA

^* e-mail: pritychenko@bnl.gov

Published online: 28 September 2020

Abstract

Nuclear reaction data collection, evaluation and dissemination have been pioneered at the Brookhaven National Laboratory since the early 50s. These activities gained popularity worldwide, and around 1970 the experimental nuclear reaction data interchange or exchange format (EXFOR) was established. The original EXFOR compilation scope consisted only of neutron reactions and spontaneous fission data, while many other nuclear data sets were ignored. Due to the high cost of new experiments, it is very important to find and recover the previously disregarded data using scientific publications, data evaluations and nuclear databases comparisons.

Fission yields play a very important role in applied and fundamental physics, and such data are essential in many applications. The comparative analysis of Nuclear Science References (NSR) and Experimental Nuclear Reaction (EXFOR) databases shows a large number of unaccounted experiments and provides a guide for the recovery of fission cross sections, yields and covariance data sets. The dedicated fission yields data compilation effort is currently underway in the Nuclear Reaction Data Centers (NRDC) network, and includes identification, compilation, storage and Web dissemination of the recovered data sets.