Texas A&M US Nuclear DATA Program

Cyclotron Institute,Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843-3366, USA

^* e-mail: nica@comp.tamu.edu

Published online: 10 September 2021

Abstract

Nuclear data evaluation is an independent century-long expert activity accompanying the development of the nuclear physics science. Its goal is to produce periodic surveys of the world literature in order to recommend and maintain the set of the best nuclear data parameters of common use in all basic and applied sciences. After WWII the effort extended and while it became more international it continued to be supported mainly by the US for the benefit of the whole world. The Evaluated Nuclear Structure Data File (ENSDF) is the most comprehensive nuclear structure database worldwide maintained by the United States National Nuclear Data Center(NNDC)at Brookhaven National Laboratory(BNL)and echoed by the IAEA Vienna Nuclear Data Services. Part of the US Nuclear Data Program since 2005 the Cyclotron Institute is one of the important contributors to ENSDF. Since 2018 we became an international evaluation center working in a consortium of peers hosted traditionally by prestigious national institutes as well as universities. In this paper the main stages of the evaluation work are presented in order to facilitate a basic understanding of the process as a guide for our potential users. Our goals are to maintain a good productivity vs. quality performance assuring the currency of the data and participating in the effort of modernizing the structure of ENSDF databases in order to make them compatible with the data-centric paradigms of the future.