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Simulation of nuclear systems requires complete data that represents the relevant nuclear physics. This requires many types of experimental measurements, theoretical physics, semi-empirical models and software systems, as well as experts to integrate and guide the process. This discipline is collectively known as nuclear data, and separate programmes within various European countries, the USA, Japan, Russia, and other OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) member countries have been operating for many decades. The NEA Working Party on International Nuclear Data Evaluation Co-operation (WPEC) exists to improve the quality and completeness of nuclear data by bringing together representatives of the major nuclear data evaluation projects of NEA member countries and selected Invitees. The Sub- and Expert Groups of the WPEC typically focus on specific technical topics, while the Collaborative International Evaluated Library Organisation Pilot Project (CIELO) was established to generate complete evaluations for a selection of the most important isotopes for criticality in nuclear technologies: 235,238U, 239Pu, 56Fe, 16O and 1H. This project stimulated numerous activities, resulting in major contributions to the Special Issue of the Nuclear Data Sheets journal and the production of a suite of new nuclear data evaluations that have been incorporated in major nuclear data libraries ENDF and JEFF. The outcomes of these evaluations include significant harmonisa-tion of discrepancies between the independent programmes, improvement in the performance for international standard nuclear criticality and neutron transmission benchmarks, complete uncertainties for nearly all parameters and the utilisation of modern data storage technologies. This work has leveraged the considerable, parallel experimental work in collecting improved experimental measurements to support nuclear data and highlighted high-priority areas for further study. A productive and durable framework for international evaluation has been established which will build upon the lessons learned. These will continue through new WPEC groups and a new IAEA evaluation network, which has been initiated in response to the success of the CIELO project. This article summaries some performance feedback on the CIELO evaluations, including recent results, and will describe ongoing and future, planned CIELO-related collaborations to further advance our understanding.

It is standard practice for nuclear data files to include tabulated data for distinct reaction channels for incident energies up to 20-30 MeV. Above these energies, the assumptions implicit in the definition of individual channels break down and event generators are typically used within codes that simulate nuclear observables in applications. These offer robust simulation of the physics but increase the computational burden. So-called ‘high-energy’ nuclear data files have been produced, but the well-known libraries are more than a decade old and rely upon models developed many years before their release. This presentation describes a modern library with a high level of production automation that offers regular updates as the models it is based upon are improved. The most recent versions of the intra-nuclear cascade and de-excitation models available within Geant4 were used to generate tabulated data of residual nuclide production. For the first released library, the INCL++5.3 and ABLA version within Geant4 v10.3 were used to calculate over 1012 incident protons over 2095 target isotopes with incident energies up to 1 GeV. These were collated into tabulated data in the international-standard ENDF-6 format. The resulting files were provided as group-wise files and were distributed as HEIR-0.1 with the FISPACT-II version 4.0 release. A second library, HEIR-0.2, has been generated using the new INCL++6.0 and C++ translation of the ABLA07 model available within Geant4 v10.4. Simulations were performed using incident protons, neutrons, deuterons and π±. An improved agreement is observed in the comparison to experimental data not only between the two versions, but against the other well-known high-energy nuclear data files and models available within Geant4. This benchmark includes mass and isotopic distributions, as well as incident-energy dependent cumulative and independent cross sections from the EXFOR database.

The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) Working Party on International Nuclear Data Evaluation Cooperation (WPEC) was established in 1989 to facilitate collaboration in nuclear data activities. Over its thirty year history, different Subgroups have been created to address topics in nearly every aspect of nuclear data, including: experimental measurements, evaluation, validation, model development, quality assurance of databases and the development of software tools. WPEC has recently completed activities on fission yield evaluation, the general nuclear database structure (GNDS) to replace the ENDF-6 format, methods to provide feedback to evaluation, studies of specific capture cross sections, new methods in thermal scattering kernel evaluation and the Collaborative International Evaluated Library Organisation (CIELO) Pilot Project. Ongoing activities in GNDS application programming interface (API) development, methods for covariance evaluation and quality assurance in nuclear data validation using the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) database are complemented by the work of two Expert Groups that oversee the High-Priority Request List (HPRL) for Nuclear Data and the continuous development of the GNDS. New activities on the use of integral experiments for nuclear data validation and adjustment, as well as the use of the Shielding Integral Benchmark Archive and Database (SINBAD) for validation have begun and will be coordinated alongside future Subgroups. After three decades we will review the status of WPEC, how it integrates other collections and activities organised by the NEA and how it dovetails with the initiatives of the IAEA and other bodies to effectively coordinate international activities in nuclear data.

The OECD-NEA High Priority Request List (HPRL) is a point of reference to guide and stimulate the improvement of nuclear data for nuclear energy and other applications, and a tool to bridge the gap between data users and producers. The HPRL is application-driven and the requests are submitted by nuclear data users or representatives of the user’s communities. A panel of international experts reviews and monitors the requests in the framework of an Expert Group mandated by the NEA Nuclear Science Committee Working Party on International Nuclear Data Evaluation Cooperation (WPEC). After approval, individual requests are classified to three categories: high priority requests, general requests, and special purpose requests (e.g., dosimetry, standards). The HPRL is hosted by the NEA in the form of a relational database publicly available on the web. This paper provides an overview of HPRL entries, status and outlook. Examples of requests successfully completed are given and new requests are described with emphasis on updated nuclear data needs in the fields of nuclear energy, neutron standards and dosimetry.

The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has developed and maintains several products that are used in the verification and validation of nuclear data, including the Java-based Nuclear Data Information System (JANIS) and the Nuclear Data Sensitivity Tool (NDaST). These integrate other collections of the NEA, including the International Handbooks of benchmark experiments on Criticality Safety and Reactor Physics (ICSBEP and IRPhEP) and their supporting relational databases (DICE and IDAT). Recent development of the JANIS, DICE and NDaST systems have resulted in the ability to perform uncertainty propagation utilising Legendre polynomial sensitivities, calculation of case-to-case covariances and correlations, use of spectrum weighting in perturbations, calculation of statistical results with suites of randomly sampled nuclear data files and new command-line interfaces to automate analyses and generate XML outputs. All of the most recent, major nuclear data libraries have been fully processed and incorporated, along with new visualisation features for covariances and sensitivities, an expanded set of reaction channel definitions, and new EXFOR data types defined by the NRDC. Optimisation of numerical methods has also improved performance, with over order-of-magnitude speed-up in the case of sensitivity-uncertainty calculations.

The EXFOR library has served as the unique repository of experimental cross section and other nuclear reaction data for 50 years. The Nuclear Reaction Data Centres (NRDC) have compiled data sets from more than 22000 experimental works for the EXFOR library. Our collaboration and effort on improvement of EXFOR coverage are described in this paper, as well as tools for digitization of numerical data from graph images developed by us for EXFOR compilation.

The challenge for any nuclear data evaluation project is to periodically release a revised, fully consistent and complete library, with all needed data and covariances, and ensure that it is robust and reliable for a variety of applications. Within an evaluation effort, benchmarking activities play an important role in validating proposed libraries. The Joint Evaluated Fission and Fusion (JEFF) Project aims to provide such a nuclear data library, and thus, requires a coherent and efficient benchmarking process. The aim of this paper is to present the activities carried out by the new JEFF Benchmarking and Validation Working Group, and to describe the role of the NEA Data Bank in this context. The paper will also review the status of preliminary benchmarking for the next JEFF-3.3 candidate cross-section files.

The TALYS Evaluated Nuclear Data Library (TENDL) has now 8 releases since 2008. Considerable experience has been acquired for the production of such general-purpose nuclear data library based on the feedback from users, evaluators and processing experts. The backbone of this achievement is simple and robust: completeness, quality and reproducibility. If TENDL is extensively used in many fields of applications, it is necessary to understand its strong points and remaining weaknesses. Alternatively, the essential knowledge is not the TENDL library itself, but rather the necessary method and tools, making the library a side product and focusing the efforts on the evaluation knowledge. The future of such approach will be discussed with the hope of nearby greater success.

Preliminary results from beta decay studies of nuclei that are important for reactor applications are presented. The beta decays have been studied using the total absorption technique (TAS) and the pure beams provided by the JYFLTRAP system at the IGISOL facility of the University of Jyväskylä.

Maps of mean monthly surface temperature and precipitation for Alaska and adjacent areas of Canada, produced by Oregon State University's Spatial Climate Analysis Service (SCAS) and the Alaska Geospatial Data Clearinghouse (AGDC), were analyzed. Because both sets of maps are generally available and in use by the community, there is a need to document differences between the processes and input data sets used by the two groups to produce their respective set of maps and to identify similarities and differences between the two sets of maps and possible reasons for the differences. These differences do not affect the observed large-scale patterns of seasonal and annual variability. Alaska is divided into interior and coastal zones, with consistent but different variability, separated by a transition region. The transition region has high interannual variability but low long-term mean variability. Both data sets support the four major ecosystems and ecosystem transition zone identified in our earlier work. Differences between the two sets of maps do occur, however, on the regional scale; they reflect differences in physiographic domains and in the treatment of these domains by the two groups (AGDC, SCAS). These differences also provide guidance for an improved observational network for Alaska. On the basis of validation with independent in situ data, we conclude that the data set produced by SCAS provides the best spatial coverage of Alaskan long-term mean monthly surface temperature and precipitation currently available.

Evaluation capacity building (ECB) is seldom mentioned in the environmental education (EE) literature, but as demonstrated by the lack and poor quality of EE evaluations, is much needed. This article focuses on an online course, Applied Environmental Education Program Evaluation (AEEPE), which provides nonformal educators with an understanding of how evaluation can be used to improve their EE programs. The authors provide descriptions of key aspects and strategies for addressing challenges they face in teaching AEEPE, such as: reducing attrition, developing and maintaining a social learning environment online, and improving students' understanding of attribution and logic models. While the course equips environmental educators with the skills necessary to design and implement basic evaluations, there is less certainty that the course contributes to generating demand for evaluation within organizations and the profession. Therefore the authors call on national organizations and associations for help with increasing the demand for ECB in the EE community.

Published equilibrium mole fraction solubilities of phenothiazine in ethanol, propylene glycol and water as mono-solvents at several temperatures were investigated to find standard apparent thermodynamic quantities of dissolution mixing and solvation based on the van’t Hoff and Gibbs equations. Further, by processing the reported mole fraction solubility values of phenothiazine in some aqueous cosolvent mixtures at T/K = 298.2, the inverse Kirkwood–Buff integrals treatment demonstrated preferential hydration of phenothiazine in water-rich mixtures and preferential solvation of this agent by cosolvents in mixtures of 0.24 < x1 < 1.00 in the {ethanol (1) + water (2)} mixed system and mixtures of 0.18 < x1 < 1.00 in the {propylene glycol (1) + water (2)} mixed system.

The opportunity that evaluators have to be educators is well known. Patton emphatically states, "Every interaction with an evaluation client, participant, stakeholder, and user is a teaching opportunity." This article discusses two ways in which evaluators can help educate the staff of nonformal programs: helping them articulate the theory that drives their program and helping them build evaluation capacity within their organization. (Contains 2 figures.)

Decision makers in nonformal education programs can maximize the utility of their evaluation investment and improve program effectiveness by being more mindful of the potential uses of evaluation information. Evaluation use is a multifaceted construct that may include, but is not limited to, the implementation of evaluation recommendations or results. Three primary types of evaluation use have emerged from four decades of scholarly research: (1) instrumental, where the results are used in making decisions about program structure and function; (2) conceptual, where the results inform or educate decision makers about matters related to the program or topic being evaluated; and (3) persuasive or symbolic, where the results are used to influence or persuade others. This article expands on these definitions of evaluation use, describes some of the challenges presented by nonformal education settings, and discusses strategies for increasing evaluation use in nonformal education programs.