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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Hash Hashemian: Visionary leadership
As Dr. Hashem M. “Hash” Hashemian prepares to step into his term as President of the American Nuclear Society, he is clear that he wants to make the most of this unique moment.
A groundswell in public approval of nuclear is finding a home in growing governmental support that is backed by a tailwind of technological innovation. “Now is a good time to be in nuclear,” Hashemian said, as he explained the criticality of this moment and what he hoped to accomplish as president.
Since 1954, ANS has united global professionals advancing the peaceful use of nuclear science and technology.
Efforts to launch what became the American Nuclear Society began just two days after President Dwight D. Eisenhower addressed the United Nations, calling for international cooperation and sharing of nuclear science and technology for peaceful civilian applications. On December 10, 1953, a small group of pioneering nuclear professionals met in the offices of Nucleonics magazine at the McGraw-Hill Building in New York City to discuss forming the first professional society for nuclear scientists and engineers.
The American Nuclear Society’s principal founders, from left: Jerome D. Luntz, Urner Liddel, and William M. Breazeale.
Inspired by Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace vision of harnessing nuclear science and technology for the betterment of humanity, the American Nuclear Society was formally established on October 11, 1954, at the National Academy of Sciences Building on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Their mission: to foster technical collaboration, host scientific meetings, and publish peer-reviewed research to guide the safe and responsible development of nuclear technology for peaceful uses, from energy, medicine, and healthcare to agriculture, industry, and space exploration.
Most, if not all, of ANS’s organizing founders were veterans of the Manhattan Project during the Second World War. Nearly a decade after helping develop the atomic bomb, these scientists and engineers had become leading figures across the United States—in government, academia, and industry— and were now channeling their expertise into the peaceful deployment of nuclear energy. This momentum was driven by the newly enacted Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which declassified nuclear power technologies and forged public-private partnerships to deploy the nation’s first civilian reactors.
The principal ANS founders—Nucleonics editor Jerome Luntz, former Office of Naval Research chief physicist Urner Liddel, and PennState nuclear engineering professor William Breazeale—respectively served as ANS’s first Vice President (1954–1955, serving without a president), Secretary, and Executive Secretary during the Society’s formative years.
ANS officers elected at the first annual meeting, June 1955 at Penn State, were (from left): James Gwavas Beckerley II, editor; Karl Cohen, treasurer; Philip Sporn, vice president; and Walter Zinn, president. (Penn State)
Following its establishment as a not-for-profit association of individual members, the Society rapidly expanded in scope and impact—shaped by, and shaping, the evolving nuclear field.
ANS held its First Annual Meeting from June 27–29, 1955, at PennState, where members elected their first president: Walter Zinn, the Canadian-American nuclear physicist and founding director of Argonne National Laboratory. The ANS Standards Committee was formed November 1956.
Under the editorship of James Gwavas Beckerley II, the former director of classification of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the Society launched its first journal in March 1956, Nuclear Science and Engineering. Nuclear News debuted in 1959 as a four-page mimeographed newsletter, focused on Society activities and industry developments, before switching to a magazine format in 1961.
By the end of the 1950s, ANS had grown to include three Professional Divisions, 14 Local Sections, and 11 Student Branches, with membership rising from 200 to more than 2,950.
During the 1960s ANS grew rapidly, driven in no small part by the construction of many nuclear plants in the United States and elsewhere for generating electricity, and also by the research in using the technology for a variety of other uses, from aerospace to merchant ships to medicine. By the end of the 1960s, ANS had 12 divisions, 28 local sections, 40 student branches, three periodicals (two journals and a magazine), and was running two national meetings and several topical meetings each year.
Each succeeding decade has brought changes both to ANS and to nuclear science and technology. In the 1970s, ANS became even more international minded than it already was, establishing Local Sections outside the U.S. including the Latin American Section of ANS in 1975, and also took its first formal steps in outreach activities. The 1980s became a time of focus on operating the plants, since there were no new U.S. plant orders, and an increased emphasis on radioactive waste management; the U.S. federal government enacted major legislation about both low- and high-level wastes and ANS started its Fuel Cycle and Waste Management Division.
In the 1990s, as the internet began reshaping how people and organizations connected with the world, the Society launched its website in 1995. During the same decade, ANS responded to a consolidating industry by increasing its presence in Washington, D.C., undertaking its first professionally directed strategic planning, and working to strengthen the pipeline of qualified nuclear professionals.
While ANS is national and international in its scope, its headquarters is located in Westmont, Illinois (about 23 miles from downtown Chicago). It did not start there, however. As with many associations, ANS moved around some during its early years.
ANS was initially organized at a series of meetings in 1953-55 from the New York City offices of McGraw Hill Publishing's Nucleonics magazine and the Reading Room (now the Members’ Room) of the National Academy of Sciences building in Washington, D.C.
The entire ANS staff in 1957, from left to right: Rosa Klotz, Lilian Grigorieff, Catherine Coppersmith, and W. W. “Greg” Grigorieff, part-time ANS executive secretary. (The Oak Ridger)
ANS's first "home" was in space provided by the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies (now named the Oak Ridge Associated Universities) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Starting in 1955, the ANS staff constituted only W. W. “Greg” Grigorieff, of the Institute, working part-time as ANS’s Executive Secretary (Executive Director) and assisted by his wife, Lilian Grigorieff. By 1957, the staff had two additional office workers, one full-time and one part-time. In 1958, Grigorieff took a position abroad with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Recognizing the need for a full-time executive and a more central location, the ANS Board of Directors made two significant changes in 1958: First, ANS moved its headquarters into office space at 86 E. Randolph St.—then home to the John Crerar Library and several technical organizations—in downtown Chicago, Illinois. Second, the Board appointed chemical engineer and Argonne National Laboratory staffer Octave Du Temple as ANS’s first full-time Executive Director; a role he served in until his retirement in 1989.
In 1964, ANS headquarters were moved again to larger offices spaces in Hinsdale, Illinois. Finally, in 1977 the Society moved to its own headquarters building (owned by ANS) in La Grange Park, Illinois. ANS would stay in the brick, three-story and nearly 30,000-square-foot building, the former elementary Oak School, until it was sold and torn down in 2023. After a brief temporary stay in Downers Grove, ANS headquarters relocated in 2024 to Westmont.
Between the start of 1990 and late 2019, ANS went through a series of five different Executive Directors; in between, four ANS staffers and members served in interim executive roles.
In 2019, the Board appointed Craig Piercy as Executive Director / CEO of ANS.
ANS has made, and continues to make, important contributions to the use of nuclear science and technology, and consequently to the larger society beyond ANS. It achieves this through its many products and services, including meetings, publications, standards, outreach, honors and awards, scholarships, teachers workshops, Organization Members, and representation in Washington, D.C.
ANS continues to be a professional organization of scientists, engineers, and other professionals devoted to the peaceful applications of nuclear science and technology. Its more than 10,000 members, from 50+ countries, come from diverse technical disciplines ranging from physics and nuclear safety to operations and power, and from across the full spectrum of the national and international enterprise, including government, academia, research laboratories, and private industry. Making it all succeed are a Board of Directors, 20 standing committees, 19 Professional Divisions, 41 Local Sections, 58 Student Sections, liaison agreements with more than 30 non-U.S. nuclear societies, and a headquarters staff of about 35 people.
