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Start of the EU Project EFNUDAT

21.03.2007

The Integrated Infrastructure Initiative EFNUDAT ("European Facilities for Nuclear Data Measurements") supported by the European Commission has taken up its work. EFNUDAT’s goal is to bring together all the measures necessary to support high quality measurements of nuclear data for the field of the transmutation of nuclear waste and design studies of the so-called Gen-IV Systems, i.e. of the latest generation of nuclear reactors. For this purpose, a consortium of 9 institutions has been formed which already operate facilities which can be used to carry out such measurements. These devices are a research reactor and eight accelerators which together cover the neutron energy range from 0.025 eV (thermal neutrons) to around 200 MeV. Furthermore, experiments with charged particles are possible at some accelerators, too. In the scope of the "Transnational Access Activity", groups can submit suggestions for experiments which are reviewed by an international programme committee. The groups' travel expenses are reimbursed for projects which are accepted. Besides this, EFNUDAT pays the user fees for the facility selected for the experiment by the programme committee. Apart from this programme, EFNUDAT also supports the so-called "Short-Term Visits" of experts to one of the participating accelerators.

These programmes are supplemented by further measures. The networking of the groups involved in nuclear data measurements in Europe are to be supported by the "Network Activities", above all, by organising internal workshops and workshops accessible to all members of the scientific community. Furthermore, the aim is to ensure the connection to the other projects supported by the European Commission, e.g. IP EUROTRANS and CANDIDE, as well as to the nuclear databases. The goal of the "Joint Research Activities" is the improvement of the facilities participating in EFNUDAT. The development of standard hardware and software for digital spectrometry, the quality assurance of the measuring processes used for beam characterisation, as well as the development of new neutron production targets are focal points. A virtual pool of radioactive targets for nuclear data measurements is, moreover, to be created.

The PTB is contributing its 3.7 MV Van-de-Graaff accelerator and the CV28 isochron cyclotron as well as the time-of-flight spectrometer used to measure neutron scattering cross-sections to EFNUDAT. The other EFNUDAT partners are:

  • Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules (Paris, France)
  • Joint Research Centre, Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements (Geel, Belgium)
  • Institute of Isotopes, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Budapest, Hungary)
  • Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe, Germany)
  • Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Institut für Strahlenphysik (Dresden, Germany)
  • Uppsala University, The Svedberg Laboratory (Uppsala, Sweden)
  • CEA Ile de France (Essonne) (Bruyères-le-Châtel, France)
  • CERN (Geneva, Switzerland)
  • Nuclear Physics Institute, Academy of Sciences (Rez, Czech Republic)

EFNUDAT can also be found online. Further information about EFNUDAT'S goals and the access requirements for external users are to be found at www.efnudat.eu.