Towards an international authoritative system for coordination and management of a unique recommended k0-NAA database

This paper describes the evolution of the database in k0-standardized neutron activation analysis (k0-NAA), ranging from its full supervision by the founders of the k0-method at the Institute for Nuclear Sciences (INW)/Gent and the Central Research Institute for Physics (KFKI)/Budapest (from about the mid 1970s up to the early 1990s), to the present situation (roughly speaking starting with the first k0 Users Workshop in 1992) where an increasing number of researchers from institutes allover the world are reporting on their experimental work aiming at the improvement and extension of the existing database. Although these individual contributions are undoubtedly commendable, the resulting fragmentary data sets leave behind important questions with respect to interpretation, evaluation, integration and recommendation, as illustrated with the (extreme) example of 131Ba. This situation urgently calls for establishing and managing an international authoritative system for the coordination and quality control of a unique database with recommended data for k0-NAA, considering such parameters as accuracy, traceability and consistency. In the present paper, it is proposed to entrust this task to a standing “Reference k0-Data Subcommittee” of the k0-ISC (k0 International Scientific Committee).