Stichting Laka

Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
Outlook on International Liability (1994)

Auteur	Nucleonics Week/Nuclear Fuel
Datum	september 1994
Classificatie	6.01.0.30/16 (AANSPRAKELIJKHEID/VERZEKERINGEN/WETGEVING)
Voorkant

Outlook On International Nuclear Liability 

SPECIAL REPORT TO THE READERS OF NUCLEONICS WEEK, INSIDE N.R.
C., AND NUCLEARFUEL

It is June 1991. The fifth anniversary of the catastrophic Chernobyl-4 accident has 
combined with the breakup of the Soviet empire and sociopolitical agitation in the 
moribund USSR to give full reign to hysteria about the state of nuclear power 
plants in eastern Europe. The IAEA throws fuel onto the fire with a thinly veiled 
condemnation of the first-generation VVER-440 units at Kozloduy in Bulgaria.
Western world leaders trumpet the extreme urgency of doing something, quickly, 
to keep the continent from exploding in a radioactive Armageddon. The G-7 group 
of industrialized countries decides to back a program to improve safety at eastern 
European reactors in exchange for commitments on rapid decommissioning. 
Vendors work their computers overtime calculating the market value of the 
work required over the longer run, estimated in 1992 at some DM 15 billion.

Three years later, some things have been done, and relatively quickly, especially 
at Kozloduy under "emergency" contracting procedures adopted by the European 
Commission. The EC has appropriated hundreds of millions of ECU to fund actions 
including engineering studies, nuclear plant "twinning," and backfits for the Soviet-
built units. A Nuclear Safety Account has been set up by western parties at the 
European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD), with tens of millions of 
dollars already appropriated to buy and install western equipment in Bulgarian and 
Lithuanian reactors and similar programs under investigation for Ukraine and Russia.
But apart from ongoing cooperation between operators and a plethora of studies, three 
years after the problem was declared "urgent," the western assistance programs have 
come to a screeching halt in front of an obstacle that has proven almost as 
impenetrable as the former Iron Curtain: the absence of third-party liability 
protection for vendors in a region where the legal status of operators is uncertain, 
nuclear legislation-where it exists-does not protect suppliers, and in some cases 
even the concepts of liability and insurance are still foreign.

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