The Data Bank acts as an international centre of reference for its participating countries with respect to basic nuclear tools, such as computer codes and nuclear data, used for the analysis and prediction of phenomena in the nuclear field, and which provides a direct service to its users by providing the means to develop, improve and validate these tools and by making them available as requested.
To this end, the Management Board for the Development, Application and Validation of Nuclear Data and Codes (MBDAV) shall establish proposals for the work programme and budget for the Data Bank services, with a view to making recommendations to the Steering Committee.
In particular, the Data Bank will:
In the fulfilment of its mandate, the Management Board will interact with the NEA standing technical committees on matters of common interest and with other bodies within the Organisation, as well as with other international organisations, as appropriate.
Each year, the Management Board shall designate a bureau with one Chair and two Vice Chairs. The bureau undertakes tasks delegated to it by the Management Board, and participates in the preparation of Management Board meetings and in the follow-up of Management Board decisions, in close co-operation with the Secretariat.
The Data Bank works in close co-operation with the NEA Nuclear Science Section, especially in the field of international computer code comparisons and integral experiments. Results from international benchmark comparisons are incorporated in the Data Bank's documentation of the computer programs and nuclear data concerned. This data is supplied to users on request.
The Data Bank stores information about experimental data used in validating different types of computer programs. Databases are currently held for radiation shielding experiments (SINBAD), criticality safety benchmark experiments (ICSBEP), fuel performance experiments, and atmospheric dispersion tracer experiments.
The Data Bank works together with the NEA Radiation Protection and Radioactive Waste Management Division on a thermochemical database project studying the key elements required for geochemical modelling. Teams of international experts are carrying out critical reviews of bibliographic references and have set up a quality-assured database.
Reports on Uranium (1992), Americium (1995), Technetium (1999), Neptunium and Plutonium (2001), Update on the previous elements (2003), Nickel (2005), Selenium (2005), Zirconium (2005), Organic Ligands (2005), Thermodynamics of Solid Solutions (2007), Thorium (2009), Tin (2012) and Iron (2013) have been published.
The Data Bank developed a web-based reporting system for the Fuel Incident Notification and Analysis System (FINAS). A detailed set of nuclear plant design characteristics and diagrams for units in NEA member countries had also been compiled.
The Data Bank maintains and provides a service for an extensive database containing CSNI Code validation matrix integral test data and separate effects test data for thermo-hydraulic transient experiments to be used in validating the large thermo-hydraulic computer codes for the safety analysis of reactor transients.
Last reviewed: 28 January 2017
