Recently, a realistic nucleon-nucleon potential has been developed with the goal of accurately reproducing isospin symmetry breaking effects in the nuclear interaction. We briefly discuss the motivation for this potential, called Argonne $v\sb{18},$ as well as the Urbana models of three-nucleon interactions. Our approach for modeling the ground states of nuclear systems begins with the development of a variational wave function. We discuss the basis for our variational wave functions and the Monte Carlo techniques used to evaluate expectation values with these wave functions. To determine the exact ground state, Green's function Monte Carlo (GFMC) techniques are used. We review the method of GFMC in general and then discuss its application to the problem of nuclear ground states in some detail.