Orateur
Description
Current nuclear data formats such as EXFOR and ENDF-6 inherit structural constraints originating from the Fortran punch-card era. While these formats have been successfully used for decades, their ASCII-based fixed-width structure makes them difficult to understand for new users and cumbersome to use in modern computational environments. As a result, tasks such as programmatic searching, version control, data retrieval, integration with plotting or visualization tools, and large-scale data utilization for AI/ML applications remain challenging. These limitations create a high entry barrier for newcomers, as effective use of ENDF-6 and EXFOR data typically requires expert knowledge and preprocessing. To address these challenges, it is essential to decouple the presentation layer from the underlying data formats and access mechanisms, enabling intuitive and format-agnostic access for entry-level users while preserving the integrity of the original data. The IAEA Nuclear Reaction Data Explorer is a web interface, Python 3–based project designed to modernize access to experimental and evaluated nuclear reaction data. It provides a reaction-based data plotter that allows users to retrieve evaluated and experimental datasets by specifying targets and reactions, including cross sections, thermal neutron cross sections, residual production cross sections, and fission yields. In addition, an EXFOR entry viewer enables easy access to experimental data without requiring prior knowledge of the EXFOR format, supporting reaction-based searches, entry visualization, and geographical analysis. The platform also offers Web APIs for computational access to data, EXFOR entries, EXFOR keyword definitions, and RIPL-3 level information, facilitating integration with external tools and workflows. Together, these developments lower entry barriers, enhance accessibility, and enable broader use of nuclear data in modern scientific and data-driven applications.
