Evaluated Nuclear Data Covariances: The Journey From ENDF/B-VII.0 to ENDF/B-VII.1

Recent interest from data users on applications that utilize the uncertainties of evaluated nuclear reaction data has stimulated the data evaluation community to focus on producing covariance data to a far greater extent than ever before. Although some uncertainty information has been available in the ENDF/B libraries since the 1970ʼs, this content has been fairly limited in scope, the quality quite variable, and the use of covariance data confined to only a few application areas. Today, covariance data are more widely and extensively utilized than ever before in neutron dosimetry, in advanced fission reactor design studies, in nuclear criticality safety assessments, in national security applications, and even in certain fusion energy applications. The main problem that now faces the ENDF/B evaluator community is that of providing covariances that are adequate both in quantity and quality to meet the requirements of contemporary nuclear data users in a timely manner. In broad terms, the approach pursued during the past several years has been to purge any legacy covariance information contained in ENDF/B-VI.8 that was judged to be subpar, to include in ENDF/B-VII.0 (released in 2006) only those covariance data deemed then to be of reasonable quality for contemporary applications, and to subsequently devote as much effort as the available time and resources allowed to producing additional covariance data of suitable scope and quality for inclusion in ENDF/B-VII.1. Considerable attention has also been devoted during the five years since the release of ENDF/B-VII.0 to examining and improving the methods used to produce covariance data from thermal energies up to the highest energies addressed in the ENDF/B library, to processing these data in a robust fashion so that they can be utilized readily in contemporary nuclear applications, and to developing convenient covariance data visualization capabilities. Other papers included in this issue discuss in considerable detail various aspects of the data producer communityʼs efforts to improve the evaluation methods and to add covariance content to the ENDF/B library. The present paper offers just a brief glimpse of these activities by drawing material from covariance papers presented at meetings, workshops and international conferences during the past five years. Highlighted are: advances in methods for producing and processing covariance data, recently developed covariance visualization capabilities, and the development and implementation of quality assurance (QA) requirements that should be satisfied for covariance data to be included in ENDF/B-VII.1.