Status and perspective of nuclear data production, evaluation and validation

A very important feature in the development of nuclear technology has been and will continue to be the flow of information from nuclear data production to the various applications fields in nuclear technology. Both, nuclear data and this communications flow are defined in this paper. Nuclear data result from specific technical activities including their production, evaluation, processing, verification, validation and applications. These activities are described, focusing on nuclear reactor calculations. Mathematical definitions of different types of nuclear data are introduced, and international forums involved in nuclear data activities are listed. Electronic links to various sources of information available on the web are specified, whenever possible