The article touches upon the issues of the nuclear energy terminology. It considers definitions of a term and the development of terminology, as a field of science. Taking Chinese nuclear energy terms as an example, the article traces the origin and contemporary challenges of the Chinese terminology as a branch of the Chinese linguistics. ISO/IEC standards in the field of nuclear energy are defined as the basis for processing first English nuclear energy terms and further for Chinese terms development. Analysis of the examples of terms and their translations confirm the importance of taking into account the criteria of standardization. The necessity of ISO/IEC standards is seen as a key factor in conducting linguistic translation analysis of terms and for creating Chinese corpus of terms and definitions for nuclear energy. Therefore, the terms’ translation is not only the work of the translation community, but also work which all relevant state departments should accomplish together and in cooperation.