How to download openmc cross section data locally

[shimwell]

While the workshop provides nuclear data within the Docker image it is also useful to know how to download nuclear data on your local machine.

There are many options for this but in general you need two types of files. The h5 files containing the cross section data and the xml file containing a look up table for these h5 files.

https://github.com/openmc-data-storage/openmc_data_downloader
python package that lets you download the isotopes in a material and makes the cross_section.xml for you

https://github.com/openmc-data-storage/openmc_data
a python package that installs terminal command line tools that will download entire libraries for you.You will need to then set your path to the cross_section.xml file from within your python script with the config, change the path to the cross_section.xml path openmc.config['cross_sections'] = '/path/to/cross_sections.xml'

https://github.com/openmc-dev/data/
Clone this repository and run the scripts to download your h5 files and cross_sections.xml
You will need to then set your path to the cross_section.xml file from within your python script with the config, change the path to the cross_section.xml path openmc.config['cross_sections'] = '/path/to/cross_sections.xml'

https://openmc.org/
From this data tab in this website you can download compressed files that when uncompressed contain h5 files and the cross_section.xml.
You will need to then set your path to the cross_section.xml file from within your python script with the config, change the path to the cross_section.xml path openmc.config['cross_sections'] = '/path/to/cross_sections.xml'