A survey of the status of nuclear cross section data for criticality safety

Abstract
Assurance of nuclear criticality safety is necessary to cultivate public acceptance of nuclear technology and nuclear power. Accurate nuclear data are needed in order to support the analytical studies required to achieve this goal. In the United States, the Nuclear Data Advisory Group (NDAG) is a multi-laboratory collaboration that has been organized by the US Department of Energy to accomplish this task. NDAG maintains an updated list of materials that are considered important for investigations of nuclear criticality safety. An independent survey of the current status of existing nuclear reaction data pertaining to these listed materials has been made with a particular emphasis on neutron cross sections. The results from this investigation are reported in this contribution.