Program - Brookhaven National Laboratory

Arjan Koning and Dimitri Rochman
Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group, NL-1755 ZG, Petten, The Netherlands
Recent advances and improvements in the proper interpretation and extension of nuclear data in the
ENDF-6 format, and the willingness of the processing communities to interact with all application communities,
together with better physics have made the goal of a unified, converged format for a truly general
purpose nuclear data library attainable. Earlier attempts to move toward a universal format frame for
nuclear data files, JEFF-3.0/A, ENDF/B-VI HE, EAF-2010 and TENDL-2011 have paved the way finally
to manage to bridge the gap that currently separates general and special purpose file format frames. The
unified format exemplified in TENDL-2012, entirely based on the original ENDF-6 format frame, now
makes the spine of a new set of nuclear data libraries and forms that are required to feed modern transport
and inventory simulation codes. The data structure, also including covariance, is such that it allows the
secular processing codes to be used simultaneously and in parallel to process, but also independently verify,
all intermediate and final forms useful to the many applications that need them: transport, shielding,
inventory and astrophysics. The comprehensive, complete and diverse resulting processed data forms have
already been successfully connected, verified and validated when used in conjunction with the inventory
code FISPACT-II and the Monte Carlo transport code TRIPOLI-4.8. Criticality, decay heat and inventory
integral measurement benchmarking activities are been assessed in order to verify and validate the
concatenation of often complex procedures and processes. The results of these assessments will lead to
further enhancements for the next generation of the TENDL library. This work was funded by the RCUK
Energy Programme under grant EP/I501045.
NE 2 11:00 AM
Use of a Continuous Integration and Deployment Software to Automate Nuclear Data
Verification and Validation
R. Arcilla, D. Brown and M. Herman
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Data verification and validation are critical to ensuring the quality of a nuclear data library prior to its
release. However, these essential but tedious processes have always placed enormous strain on NNDC’s
limited manpower resources, especially in the final months leading to the scheduled release. Cognizant
of this issue, the NNDC has implemented a highly-automated system code-named ADVANCE which is
based on the continuous integration and deployment framework that originated from the software industry.
ADVANCE uses readily available open-source software components to deliver its powerful functionalities
for the benefit of NNDC and the nuclear data community. Since the release of the ENDF/B-VII.1 library,
it has been used to automatically run all ENDF checking programs, pre-processing and processing codes,
and pertinent MCNP5 benchmark calculations each time a new or revised evaluation is committed to
the ENDF repository on NNDC’s GForge collaboration server. Processing results will then be posted
on NNDC’s Web site for the concerned evaluator to review. This talk and paper will present in detail
ADVANCE’s underlying software components and how they tightly work together to ensure the quality
of every new or revised evaluation while providing immediate feedback to the evaluator. Furthermore,
current development efforts to enhance the capabilities of ADVANCE will also be discussed.
NE 3 11:20 AM
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