Abstract
This chapter outlines the main features of international treaties adopted in order to deal with nuclear accidents, both from the point of view of their prevention and from the point of view of their consequences. International nuclear law, intended as a set of legally binding rules creating States’ rights and obligations relating to the conduct of activities related to the use of atomic energy, has mainly evolved as a result of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986. These rules relate to nuclear safety and security, emergency preparedness and response and liability for nuclear damage. However, the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in 2011 has shown that nuclear accidents can still happen, even in a highly developed State. As a result, the effectiveness of international nuclear law, in particular as regards the legal framework for nuclear safety and for emergency preparedness and response, is currently under review.
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Notes
- 1.
See Arangio-Ruiz 1963.
- 2.
This is especially, though not exclusively, true in the case of the earlier studies relating to international nuclear law: see, in particular, Arangio-Ruiz 1963, 560–574.
- 3.
According to a working definition adopted within the IAEA by the Agency’s Advisory Group on Nuclear Security, ‘nuclear security’ means: ‘the prevention and detection of, and response to, theft, sabotage, unauthorized access, illegal transfer or other malicious acts involving nuclear material, other radioactive substances or their associated facilities’ (see: IAEA Doc. GOV/2005/50).
- 4.
Stoiber 2010, 219.
- 5.
IAEA Doc. INFCIRC/449.
- 6.
IAEA Doc. INFCIRC/546.
- 7.
The Code of Conduct on the Safety of Research Reactors was adopted by the IAEA Board of Governors on 8 March 2004 (IAEA Doc. GOV/OR.1088). In resolution GC(48)/RES/10, the 2004 IAEA General Conference endorsed the code of conduct and encouraged member States to apply the guidance therein to the management of research reactors.
- 8.
Apart from Article 27, Chap. 5 also contains a provision (Article 28) relating to ‘disused sealed sources’, which are outside the scope of this chapter. In principle, under Article 3, the Joint Convention does not apply to ‘waste that contains only naturally occurring radioactive material and that does not originate from the nuclear fuel cycle, unless it constitutes a disused sealed source or is declared as radioactive waste for the purposes of this Convention by the Contracting Party’. A ‘sealed source’ is defined in Article 2 as ‘radioactive material that is permanently sealed in a capsule or closely bonded and in a solid form, excluding reactor fuel elements’.
- 9.
See Gioia 2002.
- 10.
IAEA Doc. INFCIRC/274/Rev.1.
- 11.
IAEA Doc. GOV/INF/2005/10-GC(49)/INF/6.
- 12.
See, for example, the latest resolution on nuclear security adopted on 23 September 2001: IAEA Doc. GC(55)/RES/10.
- 13.
‘Nuclear Material’ is defined so as to exclude radioactive material not associated with the nuclear fuel cycle (Article 1 (a)).
- 14.
IAEA Doc. INFCIRC/335.
- 15.
Moser 1986, 12–13.
- 16.
See Adede 1987, 3, 16–25, and 136–140.
- 17.
IAEA Doc. INFCIRC/336.
- 18.
See Moser 1986, 14.
- 19.
The Paris Convention will be further amended by a Protocol adopted in 2004, but not yet in force, in order to bring it in line with the modernized regime envisaged in the 1997 Vienna Protocol, and in order to provide for a higher minimum limit of compensation.
- 20.
IAEA Doc. INFCIRC/500. The Vienna Convention entered into force on 12 November 1977.
- 21.
IAEA Doc. INFCIRC/566. The Vienna Protocol entered into force on 4 October 2003.
- 22.
IAEA Doc. INFCIRC/821.
- 23.
IAEA Doc. GOV/2011/59-GC(55)/14.
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Gioia, A. (2012). Nuclear Accidents and International Law. In: de Guttry, A., Gestri, M., Venturini, G. (eds) International Disaster Response Law. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague, The Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-6704-882-8_4
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