The role of nuclear data for fusion technology studies

Nuclear data are of fundamental importance in studies of nuclear technology. In these studies, experiments to measure cross sections and decay properties and simulations of the design of fission power plants, fusion devices and accelerators are included. The large amount of data required is stored in computer readable formats in data libraries and the most common of these are the general purpose files used for neutronics or transport calculations. These files also contain the standards against which most measurements are made. The other class of libraries are the special purpose ones containing decay data, fission yields and cross section data for dosimetry and activation. This paper gives examples of what data are available and describes their use for various fusion applications. The focus will be on neutron-induced activation data with examples of how the reactions of particular importance can be identified. All data should be accompanied by estimates of the uncertainty. This is best achieved by including covariance data; however, this is extremely challenging and only a subset of the available data has such uncertainty data. The general principles of how covariance matrices are used are outlined.