Unit 1

Introduction to Nuclear Law

 Contents
• Historical evolution of nuclear technology and
uses
• Peaceful uses of nuclear energy- application of
nuclear power
• Financial and economic consideration for
acquiring nuclear energy
• Nuclear accidents case studies –Three Mile
Island, Chernobyl disaster, Hiroshima &
Nagasaki
• Atoms – smallest unit of an element, consisting of
electrons, protons, and neutrons. Protons and
neutrons make up the atom’s nucleus while
electrons orbit the nucleus
• Fission – process in which the nucleus of an atom
is split to produce heat
• Fusion – process in which atoms are joined to
produce energy
• Isotope – a form of an element that contains an
unusual number of neutrons in its nucleus
• Uranium - a heavy, radioactive metal
• Uranium-235 (U-235) an isotope of uranium
is used as fuel in nuclear power plants
• Deuterium – isotope of hydrogen used in fusion
• Chain reaction - continuous fission process of
atoms
• Breeder reactors – produce fissionable material in
the chain reaction
 Nuclear research
• During WWII, nuclear research focused mainly on
the development of defense weapons -
Manhattan Project
• Nexus between NL, NE & NT
• Peaceful applications of nuclear technology
• Use of nuclear energy for the generation of
electricity
• Application of nuclear technology to scientific,
medical and industrial purposes
• What is nuclear law?
• “The body of special legal norms created to
regulate the conduct of legal or natural
persons engaged in activities related to
fissionable materials, ionizing radiation and
exposure to natural sources of radiation.”
Stoiber, Handbook of Nuclear Law
• Body of special legal norms - nuclear law is a
part of general national
legislation/international conventions,
comprising different rules required by the
special nature of the technology
• Why regulate?
• Risk and benefit approach that is central to
managing activities that has both hazards and
advantages for social and economic
development
• Conduct of legal persons, including
commercial, academic, scientific and
governmental entities, individuals due to the
twin nature; hazardous and advantageous
 Concept of NL
• Relationship between Nuclear law and other
laws
• Relationship between NL and State’s legal
infrastructure
• Risk and benefits of NL
• Exploiting NE
• Sanctions in International Relations
• Nuclear related activities
• Objective of NL:
• To provide a legal framework for conducting
activities related to nuclear energy and
ionizing radiation in a manner which
adequately protects individuals, property and
the environment
 Principles of Nuclear Law
• Safety principle • Sustainable
• Security principle development
• Responsibility principle
principle • Compliance principle
• Permission principle • Independence
• Continuous control principle
principle • Transparency
• Compensation principle
principle • International
co-operation
 Why safety principle
• High levels of radiation – affect living cells,
cause acute health effects and acute radiation
syndrome
• Health effects like cancer and cardio vascular
diseases
• Primary aim of NL – (1) exercise of caution (2)
prevent damage and (3) minimize any adverse
effects resulting from misuse or from
accidents
• Subsidiary principles that have emerged from
safety principle – (i) prevention principle, (ii)
protection principle, (iii) precautionary
principle (foresight)
• Balancing benefits with social risks - public
health, safety, security and the environment
 Security principle
• Development of NT – for peaceful purposes
only
• Security concerns on two levels:
(1) abandoned nuclear stations (2) use of NT by
groups or institutions for criminal activities (3)
countries diverging NT for non-peaceful
purposes
 Who is ‘responsible’
• Various players in the field of NT
• Responsibility - operator or licensee who has
been granted the authority to conduct specific
activities related to NT
• Responsibility includes financial liabilities as
well
‘Permission’ for activities related to NT
• Nature of NL – risks may outweigh benefits
• Nuclear related activities are prohibited under
almost all legal systems
• NL states that prior permission necessary to
conduct nuclear activities
• Terms used in permission – licenses,
authorization
• Creation of regulatory bodies
 Continuous control principle
• Nuclear activities require continuous
monitoring mechanism
• Activities must adhere to the terms of the
authorization
• Compensation principle: NL requires that
States adopt measures to provide adequate
compensation in the event of a nuclear
accident
Sustainable development principle
• Fissile material can pose health, safety and
environmental risks for very long periods of
time
• SDP
• Problem – nuclear fissile have a long-lived
character
• Spent nuclear fuel
 Compliance principle
• Damage beyond borders
• Radiological contamination beyond national
borders
• Compliance principle under NL indicates the
national obligation of the State to adhere to
international obligations
• Domestic laws should reflect the
commitments of the State under International
Law
• Independence principle – regulatory bodies
that oversee nuclear activities
• Regulatory bodies independence and
judgment necessary when safety and security
is concerned
• Transparency principle
• Initial stages nuclear information was
confidential – mainly used in defense
• Shift to peaceful purpose meant full
information about NE to be shared particularly
the risk factors due to health and safety
• Sharing the benefits – helpful for
socio-economic development
 International co-operation principle
• Trans-boundary impacts requires nuclear policies
to be harmonized to develop co-operative
programs to limit risks of damage to the global
population and world
• Illicit trafficking in nuclear material and the
proliferation of nuclear explosives require high
level of international co-operation
• Codify the obligations of States in the nuclear field
that the governments comply in good faith with
those obligations
• Effective control on nuclear industry is
required due to character of the nuclear
industry, with frequent movements of nuclear
material and equipment across national
borders
 Peaceful uses of Nuclear Energy
• Term ‘nuclear’ general perception
• (1) weapons (2) accidents
• Shift in US nuclear policy from military use to
peaceful use of nuclear energy
• Sharing of nuclear information, in return the
pledge to use NE for peaceful purposes
• President Eisenhower wanted to shift “the
fearful atomic dilemma” by suggesting a
means to transform the atom to a benefit for
mankind
• Atoms for Peace speech at United Nations
General Assembly, 1953
• Prime reason is the escalation in the nuclear
arms race between US and Soviet Union
• Uses in NT:
• Agriculture: Plant mutation breeding, process
of exposing the seeds of a plant to radiation,
such as gamma rays, to cause mutations
• Plant mutation breeding and socio-economic
benefits - increased crops three-fold, achieve
food security and improved nutrition
• Control of insects:
• Crop losses to insects – major concern
• Use of insecticides and global crop = 10%
• Genetically modified crops that use less
insecticide
• NT in food industry: exposing foodstuffs to
gamma rays to kill bacteria to increase shelf
life - Irradiation technology to preserve food
• Irradiation technology can delay ripening of
fruits and vegetables to give them greater
shelf life
• Helps to control pests
• Carbon dating – a process of dating organic
material using nuclear technology
• Basis of radiocarbon dating: all living things
absorb carbon from the atmosphere and food
sources around them
• When the plant or animal dies, they stop
absorbing, but the radioactive carbon that they’ve
accumulated continues to decay
• Measuring the amount left over gives an estimate
as to how long something has been dead
• Desalination – (1) thermal desalination (2)
membrane desalination – reverse osmosis (3)
Electro-deionization
• Most desalination uses fossil fuels,
electrically-driven desalination
• Shift to NT to reduce emission
• NT – to treat urban waste water
Shift from fossil fuel energy:
(a) large-scale combustion has many human-health
and environmental consequences
(b) extraction of fossil fuels is costly and
energy-consuming, therefore energy gain becomes
smaller (energy obtained vs energy invested)
(c) fossil fuels constitute a finite and valuable
resource for non-energy related industrial and
manufacturing processes, and used sparingly and
preserved for future generations
 • Why Nuclear Energy?
• Nuclear energy is capable of replacing the tasks now
performed by the combustion of fossil fuels
• Nuclear technology - only developed energy source
capable of delivering -
(1) enormous quantities of energy needed to run
modern industrial societies safely
(2) Economical
(3) Reliable
(4) Sustainable, both environmentally and the available
resource base
 Financing NE
• Nuclear power plants – require large
infrastructure investments
• Common features - high upfront capital costs,
long construction periods, low and stable
operational costs, and lengthy payback periods
• Risk associated with the construction
• Financing relates to how the upfront costs of
building infrastructure are met
• Mostly finance through public purse or user
charges
• Responsibility of owners/operators of nuclear
power plants to secure financing for new
nuclear power plants
• For investors, long-term governmental
commitment to a nuclear power program,
national energy policy and political situation
• Two main ways in which a nuclear energy and
its ownership can be structured: government
(public) or corporate (private) finance
• Government financing
• Traditional Approach –
• Nuclear power introduced in a country with
government support
• Governments make a political decision about the
desirability or necessity of including nuclear
power as part of their national energy mix
• Governments have control over regulatory
practices and policies and control over
uncertainties, delays, cost escalations, and project
cancellations with financial losses
• Government directly finances a project through a
mix of equity and debt
• Availability depends on government policy and
market design
• Government financing takes place in markets
where governments are also involved in owning
and operating energy utilities
• Most operating plants were financed in this way
in 1970s and 1980s – effect of oil embargo, most
plants were regulated by the government
• Finance is raised within private companies
through a mix of debt and equity
• Corporate entity arranges credit from lenders
and takes on the full risk related to the
project.
• Groups of investors may choose to
cooperatively finance a project
• Widely used in France, Korea, Russia, UK and
USA
• Government – to – Government Financing
• Loan Guarantees
• Host Government – Backed Power Purchase
Agreement (PPA)
• Vendor Financing
• Investor Financing
• Government – to – Government Financing:
purchasing country attracts foreign funds as
well as the nuclear expertise of the vendor
and both countries have the opportunity to
build a bilateral relationship that may last for
decades
• China & Pakistan
• Russia & Bangladesh, India
• Loan Guarantees: Governments may choose
to back project promoters through the
provision of loan guarantees
• Projects that are commercial arrangements
between a plant’s owners and lenders. E.g.
USA
• Host Government – Backed Power Purchase
Agreement (PPA)
• PPA – specific agreement that deals with
procurement or purchase of power and governs
the implementation of the project in relations to
the power sector
• PPA covers two core issues: (1) framework for
construction, operation and maintenance of
power station, (2) contractual obligation
regarding the sale and purchase of power
• Agreement stipulates the price and amount,
as well as the term over which, the buyer
purchases power from the seller
• Buyers are typically wholesalers or institutions
that require secure supply at a fixed price
• E.g. Turkey
• Vendor Financing – covers a variety of
financing options, including corporate
financing via equity or loans provided from
the balance sheet of the Nuclear Power Plant
vendor
• Vendor loans are often short term, with
vendors to take an equity stake which
provides a share of the future project income
• E.g. Russian Federation’s Rosatom, China
National Nuclear Corporation - CNNC, China
General Nuclear Power Group - CGN
• Co-operative corporate finance model:
Corporate financing by power intensive
customers in a liberalized market: Mankala
model (Finland)
 History of Nuclear Development in India

• Nuclear energy sector is the fifth-largest

source of electricity in India
• Seven nuclear power plants with twenty two
nuclear reactors
• Kaiga (4), Kakrapar (2), Kudankulam (2),
Madras (2), Narora (2), Rajasthan (6), Tarapur
(4)
• NP policy in India – civil use
• Civil nuclear strategy has been directed
towards complete independence in the
nuclear fuel cycle
• Construction of the first nuclear reactor, used
for civilian purposes, at Tarapur in the 1960s
• Excluded from the 1970 Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) due to it
acquiring nuclear weapons capability after
1970
 Case studies on Nuclear incidents
• Hiroshima/Nagasaki
• Three Mile Island accident
• Chernobyl disaster
• Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
• On August 6, 1945, the United States
unleashed the most powerful weapon ever
used in wartime
• A single atomic bomb killing tens of thousands
of people immediately
• Thousands more died as the victims of
radiation
• The first application of the nuclear fission
reaction towards “weapon of mass
destruction” because it produces an
enormous amount of energy that could kill a
large number of people instantly
 Emergence of Atomic rivals
• Soviet Union as a super power after WWII
• End of WWII relations between the country
and the Soviet Union had worsened
• Soviets increased their efforts to spread
communism and dominate governments in
Eastern Europe and other areas of the world
• US policy of containment—holding
communism in where it already existed and
stopping its further spread around the world
 Three Mile Island accident
• In 1979, Three Mile Island nuclear power plant
in USA a malfunction caused part of the core
to melt in the #2 reactor. The TMI-2 reactor
was destroyed
• Some radioactive gas was released a couple of
days after the accident, but not enough to
cause any concerns to local residents
• There were no injuries or adverse health
effects from the Three Mile Island accident
Fukushima nuclear accident
• Fukushima nuclear accident - Earthquake,
enormous tsunami and chain reactions led to
a meltdown of the Fukushima power plant
• Fukushima - worst nuclear energy incident in
the world since Chernobyl
• Radioactive gas leaked into the atmosphere,
eventually being measured as far away as
Tokyo and Iceland
 Japan NE policy after Fukushima
• Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in 2011
was a turning point for Japan’s nuclear energy
and overall energy policy
• Japan has reduced its dependence on nuclear
energy drastically
• The biggest impact is the huge drop in the
number of nuclear reactors operating
 Chernobyl (1986)
• Most serious accident involving radiation
exposure, deaths of 30 workers and radiation
injuries to over a hundred others
• Large areas of the three countries were
contaminated and deposition of released
radionuclides was measurable in all countries
of the northern hemisphere
• Number of thyroid cancers in individuals
exposed in childhood, in particular in the
severely contaminated areas
 Right to Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy
in Light of the Protection of Human Rights

• Existence of the right to use nuclear energy

for peaceful uses
• Exercise of this right is conditional, subject to
limitations by non-proliferation duties and
other rules of international law
• ‘inalienable right’ to peaceful use of NE =
protection of the human being (limits)
• Use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes
approach between economic and social
prosperity and the danger and risks of human
destruction
• Nuclear Technology = between prosperity and
destruction