The struggle with nuclear power standards

With the evidence of the past two years, industry has proved it can meet the challenge to produce the necessary standards to eliminate licensing and construction delays for nuclear plants. It has already proved that nuclear plants can be built and operated safely. The proof has unfortunately been on a small scale, with only a few of the utilities participating. In order to meet the time schedule to produce the many standards that are still required, the rest of the utilities must commit the necessary manpower to do the work and the various standards organizations must be expanded to properly administer and coordinate the effort. A big step has recently been taken by ANSI in setting up the sixteen area managers under the Nuclear Technical Advisory Board (NTAB).