Insurance Cover for Revised Nuclear Liability

The financial security to be provided to victims of an incident at a nuclear installation is the main objective of international nuclear liability conventions. As from the introduction of the Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy in 1960 and the Vienna Convention on Liability for Nuclear Damage in 1963 insurers have been prepared to provide the financial capacity needed to cover the liability under both conventions. They did so in close co-operation with the competent national and international authorities, which has resulted in the insurability of as much of the nuclear liability under the conventions as possible. This tradition of co-operation between authorities and insurers was extended to include the revision negotiations regarding the above conventions, which were concluded in 1997 and 2004 respectively. This has resulted in the insurability of by far the largest part of the convention based liability. However, some heads of damage have been introduced about which insurers had expressed concerns as to their likelihood to attract insurance support. In view of the explicit choice by Convention States to include the uninsurable heads of damage into the revised conventions one would expect that liability for them would fall upon national Governments. This would reflect practice in a number of States, which already assume liability for uninsurable mandatory liabilities for a long time. Nonetheless some other States now seem reluctant to do so, the resulting deadlock having a tendency to manifest itself in a negative perception of the insurance industry. Insurers are therefore appreciative of the forum provided by the CNS to once again explain the areas where problems as regards insurability have arisen and why this is the case. This presentation will show that those areas are few in number and notably relate to a limited number of environmental damages as well as the extension of prescription periods. Furthermore, thoughts will be shared on the extent to which the world wide insurance industry might develop its capability to reduce limits of insurability.(author)