The Nuclear Standards Program of the American Nuclear Society

The American Nuclear Society (ANS) is one of the major developers of voluntary standards in the nuclear field. ANS has been active in standards development for over 30 years, since 1956. The Society was accepted by the American National Standards Institute as an accredited organization for standards development in 1985. The ANS Standards Committee is under the control and direction of the Standards Steering Committee, a standing committee of the Society. Consensus committees, subcommittees and working groups make up the structure of the organization. The Standards Committee has responsibility for developing standards for systems design and non-hardware plant-level criteria for commercial nuclear power plants. In addition, ANS develops standards for a) research reactors; b) siting requirements for nuclear facilities; c) reactor operations and training of operatorsj tf) radtation shielding; e) isotopes and radiation; f) reactor physics; g) fuel management; h) radioactive waste management; i) nuclear criticality safety outside reactors; j) fission product behavior; and k) utilization of computer programs in the nuclear field. ANS presently offers 107 American National Standards for use by the nuclear community. More than 900 volunteers are actively engaged in the maintenance of these and over thirty new standards projects.