Josh Howland, Marissa Ramirez-Zweiger (alumna), Katy Huff, Rachel Slaybaugh
Tools used in the fields of Data and Computational Science have undergone many rapid modernizations, including a shift to the use of cleaner, more forgiving programming languages and frameworks. Computational neutronics has begun to follow this trend, though this is impeded by the number of legacy codes are written in older, less accessible languages and under antiquated programming modes. Recent work in PyNE aims enable the transition to modern languages and programming paradigms, providing modules in Python that interface with legacy Fortran programs.
The National Nuclear Data Center (NNDC) provides a suite of Evaluated Nuclear Structure Data File (ENSDF) Analysis and Utility programs written in Fortran. Constantly trying to manage and call 20+ different executables is hard to manage and can rapidly become fragmented. Work is in progress to create a Python interface for the majority of these programs in PyNE. Python allows for significantly easier access, and modern paradigms in programming including testing and modularity.