Damage Giving Rise to Compensation under the International Nuclear Liability Regime

The international nuclear liability regime is based on uniform rules on civil liability for nuclear damage which are laid down in a number of multilateral treaties. These are, first of all, the 1960 Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy and the 1963 Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage, both revised following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident through Protocols adopted, for the Vienna Convention, in 1997and, for the Paris Convention, in 2004]. In addition, the 1997 Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, which aims to serve as an 'umbrella' covering States party to either the Paris Convention or the Vienna Convention and States party to neither, also contains uniform rules on civil liability for nuclear damage. Finally, the nuclear liability picture is completed by the 1963 Brussels Convention Supplementary to the Paris Convention, also revised by a Protocol adopted in 2004, and the 1988 Joint Protocol Relating to the Application of the Vienna Convention and the Paris Convention, but these treaties do not contain uniform rules on civil liability for nuclear damage and are, therefore, not relevant for the purposes of this article. The uniform rules laid down in the above-mentioned treaties apply to civil liability for "nuclear damage" caused by a "nuclear incident" occurring at a "nuclear installation" or in the course of transport of "nuclear material" to or from such an installation. The treaty definitions of all of these terms are, therefore, crucial to correctly understand the scope of application of the international nuclear liability regime in general and of the specific treaty, or treaties, that may apply in the event of a nuclear incident. However, the definition of "nuclear damage" plays an especially important role in this context, in particular for the victims of a nuclear incident seeking compensation: as a rule, only damage qualifying as "nuclear damage" under the applicable treaty may in fact be compensated on the basis of that treaty and of national implementing legislation; damage other that "nuclear damage" may be considered from the point of view of the international nuclear liability regime as 'non-nuclear damage', and may only be compensated under that regime on an exceptional basis and under specific conditions.