Nuclear data - their importance and application in fission reactor physics calculations

Nuclear fission reactor technology applications require a very large volume of nuclear data, mainly neutron cross sections, but also many nuclear structure and radio-active decay data for a large number of materials over the whole periodic table of the elements. A world-wide cooperative effort, is reported, of more than 30 years between many nuclear research laboratories and nuclear data centers was needed to provide nuclear scientists and engineers with the required nuclear data base, and yet more efforts are needed to fill still existing gaps, clarify discrepancies between different experimental data, and to improve the accuracy of existing data, in response to fission reactor technology requirements. 31 refs, 3 figs, tabs