Nucleonica

NUCLEONICA is a nuclear science portal developed at the European Commission's Institute for Transuranium Elements in Karlsruhe, Germany.

The portal is aimed at professionals, academics and students working in nuclear power, health physics and radiation protection, nuclear and radio-chemistry, and astrophysics. A unique feature of the portal is the wide range of user friendly web-based nuclear science applications. The portal is also ideal for education and training purposes and as a knowledge management platform to preserve nuclear knowledge built up over many decades.

The NUCLEONICA portal consists of four main "Learning Centres" for nuclear data, applications, knowledge, and networking. These are described briefly.

Data Centre

Nuclear data can be accessed through online interactive nuclide charts (based on decay modes, half-lives, binding energy, spin, parity, etc.), reference data (datasheets, derived data, cross sections, spectral data, fission yields, etc.) and searchable databases for internationally evaluated nuclear data. The NUCLEONICA database, which is based on the Joint Evaluated Fission and Fusion (JEFF3.1) radioactive decay datafile, contains decay data on 3896 nuclides in ground and isomeric states. In addition, spectral data with a total of approximately 54000 energies and emission probabilities is available. Additional databases include the 8th Table of Isotopes8, prompt gamma neutron activation data, and effective dose coefficients.

Applications Centre

NUCLEONICA applications are designed to be user friendly, intuitive, and require a minimum of learning time. These powerful applications, which form the “backbone” of the nuclear science portal, can be used by professionals and students for everyday calculations. The applications include: the mass activity calculator, radioactive decay, gamma dosimetry & shielding, fission yields, transport and packaging, library creation for spectroscopy, nuclide mixtures, and webGraphics. Recently added applications include a range and stopping power module for charged particle interaction with matter and a radiological dispersion module for collective dose estimates following a radiological dispersion event (restricted access). Currently a new gamma spectrum simulator for a wide range of NaI and HPGe detectors is under development12. together with a web-based Monte Carlo module for gamma and neutron dosimetry and shielding13. Through a collaboration between the Karlsruhe Research Centre and the Institute for Transuranium Elements, a web-based version of KORIGEN called webKORIGEN14 has been developed for use in NUCLEONICA. For users, webKORIGEN overcomes the necessity of installation, input preparation and processing, compilation and debugging by offering an intuitive user-friendly web-based application – ideal for training purposes. With webKORIGEN, the user can concentrate on science rather than on the technicalities of large Fortran computer codes. WebKORIGEN supports calculations for a set of standardized problems, trimmed to three major classes of nuclear plants: the thermal power plants deployed worldwide as Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) and Boiling Water Reactors (BWR) and a future extension to the current industrial technology the European Fast Reactor (EFR).

Knowledge Centre

The Knowledge Centre, or NUCLEONICA Wiki, is the content management system (CMS) used for NUCLEONICA documentation. It is based on the same MediaWiki "engine" as used in Wikipedia. The NUCLEONICAwiki is used for online Help, ReadingRoom (for articles, and presentations), web-links, chemical element information, ask an expert Q & A etc. The NUCLEONICAwiki is also used for training course organisation. All training course announcements, agendas, full presentations, exercises, case studies, photo galleries etc., are available online in the NUCLEONICAwiki.

Networking Centre

NUCLEONICA's networking features provide tools to encourage the development of discussion communities around the applications and to enhance collaboration with a view to "capturing" the tacit knowledge (knowledge management) from the expert developers and passing this on to a wider community. The Networking Centre allows users to stay in contact with colleagues from workshops or conferences, meet scientists from similar areas of interest and build up an international contact list. The users can represent themselves (personal page) and their Institute/Organisation in the international science community. The nuclear news aggregation service provides latest news and information on nuclear issues - the JRC’s web crawlers scan more than one thousand newspapers every few minutes. NUCLEONICA's Calendar can be used to enter information on forthcoming events, meetings, conferences etc. The user can decide if he/she wishes to share this information with other users. In this way a user-generated calendar of events is created. Alternatively, the user can decide to keep the information in his personal diary.

External links

• Nucleonica: www.nucleonica.net

• NucleonicaWiki

• Karlsruhe Nuclide Chart