Department of Energy Announces $6 Million for Research on Nuclear Data Benefitting Nuclear Science and Applications

Projects span experimental and theoretical approaches to obtaining new data and reducing uncertainty in existing data

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $6 million in funding for seven projects in nuclear data for basic and applied nuclear science.

Increasingly, access to accurate, reliable nuclear data plays an essential role in the success of federal missions such as non-proliferation, nuclear forensics, homeland security, national defense, space exploration, clean energy generation, and scientific research.

“Nuclear data is important in both basic nuclear science and applications,” said Timothy Hallman, DOE Associate Director of Science for Nuclear Physics. “Up-to-date, high precision nuclear data is essential to help ensure accurate modeling tools which lead to robust and realistic designs for systems in nuclear science and engineering.”

Data access is also key to innovative commercial developments such as new medicines, energy exploration, energy security, nuclear reactor design, and isotope production. The mission of the United States Nuclear Data Program (USNDP) managed by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Nuclear Physics (NP) program is to provide current, accurate, authoritative data for workers in pure and applied areas of nuclear science and engineering.

The $6 million in new awards announced today encompasses topics relevant to several DOE missions. A particular focus of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) was proposals targeting improvement in the nuclear data pipeline (data collection, evaluation, and dissemination), proposals for multi-disciplinary high impact projects, and proposals for projects with strong connections to basic science.

Projects include research related to antineutrino detection for basic science and energy applications, nuclear data on thermal neutron capture which is important for many areas of nuclear science, and methods to improve the fidelity and impact of nuclear data experiments.

The projects were selected by competitive peer review under the DOE Funding Opportunity Announcements for the Nuclear Data Inter-Agency Working Group (NDIAWG) Research Program (DE-FOA-0002440) and the Continuation of Solicitation for the Office of Science Financial Assistance Program (DE-FOA-0002181).

Total funding is $6 million for awards lasting up to three years in duration, with a total of $2.7 million in Fiscal Year 20222 dollars and outyear funding contingent on congressional appropriations. The list of projects and more information can be found here: https://science.osti.gov/np.