Background Information
India is a member of the NRDC network that now has 14 members. One of the important databases in the IAEA nuclear data mirrored in India at the BARC site http://www-nds.indcentre.org.in, is EXFOR, which is the compilation of published experimental nuclear reaction data for incident neutrons, gammas and charged particles on various targets. ND evaluators, applied users and experimentalists use this widely. There is a specific format in which the experimental data is coded into the EXFOR system for ready recovery and comparison with evaluated nuclear data used by reactor physicists. The international network of various nuclear reaction data centers at the IAEA, NNDC (USA), NEA (France), RNDC (Russia) etc. perform this task. BARC has already initiated this EXFOR activity since 2006 with inputs from BARC (e.g. RPDD, NPD, RCD etc.) and universities.
The DAE-BRNS conducted successfully two EXFOR training Workshops in Mumbai one in 2006, 2007 and another in 2009. In each of these three workshops, more than 40 delegates (experimental nuclear scientists, university faculty, Ph.D. and M.Sc. students) took active part and got a "first-time" exposure to a classical nuclear data physics activity of EXFOR compilation culture.
About NRDC: The official website of NRDC http://www-nds.iaea.org/nrdc describes NRDC functions in detail. All the presentations by various member states are available in this URL. The NRDC was established with 4 core centres (US, France, Austria (IAEA) and Russia-Obninsk) in 1966. The 4 ND centres coordinate the world-wide collection, compilation and dissemination of nuclear reaction data efficiently under the auspices of the IAEA. There are now 14 ND centres including regional, national and specialised data centres that provide essential complementary functions to the 4 core data centres by assuming particular responsibility for the collection and dissemination of data of a specialised type or application. The other NRDC data centres (country/date of joining NRDC) are as follows: Russia-Moscow/1974; Japan-Sapporo/1975, Russia-Photonuclear data, Moscow/1982; China/ 1987, Japan-JAERI/1991, Hungary/1992, Russia-Sarov, 1997, Ukraine/1998, Korea-KAERI/ 2000, India (2008). Germany joined the NRDC in 1974 and Japan-RIKEN in 1983 but discontinued. Their tasks are handled by other data centres.