Legal aspects of nuclear energy

The legal basis for the use of nuclear energy is generally given by an Atomic Energy Act. Additionally, however, a system of regulations and standards has to be set up to lay down more detailed requirements. The fundamental philosophy and strategy has to be specified by governmental organizations. For the specification and implementation of the requirements some minimum organizational arrangements are necessary, which are not only restricted to governmental organizations. Furthermore procedural regulations have to be laid down before the implementation phase. This includes aspects like public participation in the licensing procedure. In practice, however, the implementation of the legal requirements always shows some weakness of the basic legal requirements. To learn from this experience some examples are presented, which gave rise to difficulties in the implementation procedure. (orig./RW)