IAEA nuclear databases for applications

The Nuclear Data Section (NDS) of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) provides nuclear data services to scientists on a worldwide scale with particular emphasis on developing countries. More than 100 data libraries are made available cost-free by Internet, CD-ROM and other media. These databases are used for practically all areas of nuclear applications as well as basic research. An overview is given of the most important nuclear reaction and nuclear structure databases, such as EXFOR, CINDA, ENDF, NSR, ENSDF, NUDAT, and of selected special purpose libraries such as FENDL, RIPL, RNAL, the IAEA Photonuclear Data Library, and the IAEA charged-particle cross section database for medical radioisotope production. The NDS also coordinates two international nuclear data centre networks and is involved in data development activities (to create new or improve existing data libraries when the available data are inadequate) and in technology transfer to developing countries, e.g. through the installation and support of the mirror web site of the IAEA Nuclear Data Services at IPEN (operational since March 2000) and by organizing nuclear-data related workshops. By encouraging their participation in IAEA Co-ordinated Research Projects and also by compiling their experimental results in databases such as EXFOR, the NDS helps to make developing countries' contributions to nuclear science visible and conveniently available. The web address of the IAEA Nuclear Data Services is http://www-nds.iaea.org and the NDS mirror service at IPEN (Brasil) can be accessed at http://www-nds.ipen.br/