The NEA Data Bank was established to promote effective sharing of data and software developed in member countries in the field of nuclear technology and radiation physics applications. It operates a Computer Program Service (CPS) which collects, compiles and verifies programs in an appropriate computer environment, ensuring that the computer program package is complete and adequately documented. Thus, the CPS software library contains more than 1000 computer programs, and also includes processed nuclear data libraries, integral experiments, databases, handbooks and safety joint-project outcomes. All this content is made available to end-user on request, and in compliance with the applicable restrictions.

One subject to which special effort has been devoted is radiation transport. Workshops and training courses including the use of computer codes have been organised in the field of neutral particle transport for codes using both deterministic and stochastic methods. The area of charged particle transport, and in particular electron-photon transport, has received increased attention for a number of technological and medical applications.

The computer code “PENELOPE, A Code System for Monte Carlo Simulation of Electron and Photon Transport” was released to the NEA Data Bank for general distribution in 2001 and has been regularly updated since then to improve both physics models and algorithms. This code is now widely used by radiation physicists, and PENELOPE workshops with hands-on training are organised on a regular basis to meet users’ demand.