January 27, 2015

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was created as an independent agency by Congress in 1974 to ensure the safe use of radioactive materials for beneficial civilian purposes while protecting people and the environment. The NRC regulates commercial nuclear power plants and other uses of nuclear materials, such as in nuclear medicine, through licensing, inspection and enforcement of its requirements.

See:

• The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
• Nuclear MaterialsIn general terms, 'source material' means either the element thorium or the element uranium, provided that the uranium has not been enriched in the isotope uranium-235. Source material also includes any combination of thorium and uranium, in any physical or chemical form, or ores that contain by weight one-twentieth of one percent (0.05 percent) or more of uranium, thorium, or any combination thereof. Depleted uranium (left over from uranium enrichment) is considered source material.
• Source Material Regulations: Radiation Protection Standards,   Radiation Protection Standards
• NRC Library
  NRC releases several hundred documents to the public each work day. The Web site contains information and the documents that are most pertinent to NRC regulatory activities. Many of the documents are in Basic References or Document Collections. The rest are available either from  record retrieval system, ADAMS, or from our Public Document Room. Documents posted at the Web site are also retrievable from ADAMS. The reference librarians at our Public Document Room can help you find a document in ADAMS or on the Web site.
• ADAMS
  The Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) is the official recordkeeping system, through which the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) provides access to the following 'libraries' or collections of publicly available documents:
  • The Publicly Available Records System (PARS) Library contains more than 730,000 full-text documents that the NRC has released since November 1, 1999, and several hundred new documents are added each day.
  • The Public Legacy Library contains more than 2 million bibliographic citations (some with abstracts and full text) for earlier documents with the majority dating back to 1980, which are available in paper or microfiche formats.
  • Search ADAMS