step 0.01 in each dimension. On the latter, the saddle point, or rather several saddle points - if there were a few of comparable heights within the 0.5 MeV energy window - were searched for by means of the IWF procedure. For odd or odd-odd nuclei, at each grid point we were looking for low-lying configurations by blocking particles on levels from the 10-th below to the 10-th above the Fermi level (in neutrons or/and protons).

The fact that searches for ground states and for saddles are separated - performed using different deformation spaces - allows saving some number of deformation parameters in Eq. (\[maingrid\]). This is equivalent to assuming that the fission saddles have mostly prolate deformations large enough to make nonaxial deformations of multipolarity $\lambda\geq 3$ less important. One has to check this assumption afterwards and separately treat nuclei in which the inclusion of nonaxial deformations with $\lambda\geq 4$ is necessary.

Although, as mentioned before, in SH nuclei the second barriers at large deformations are usually smaller than the first one or do not exist at all, for $Z=98$-101 the mesh (4) was extended to $\beta_{20}=1.5$ and the second saddles were searched for by the IWF technique. It 