Survey of licensing and regulation of nuclear power plants outside United States: a comparative study

Licensing and regulation of nuclear energy in France, Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, and Spain are discussed. There are six charts on the national organizations and their licensing procedures. Primarily writen to American lawyers, this study may serve as an initial guide into different legal systems of nuclear energy outside US. The whole interpretation is comparative in scope. Begining with a broad constitutional picture for each country, the paper presents the basic on how the law and statutes are supposed to work and how they are really applied in the practice, mostly in critical decision-making processes. Typical experiences of legal nature are recorded as illustractions of specific fields of national law. Each chapter has main four topics: Preliminary Overview, Structure of the System, How th e System Works, and Comparative Observations. The study is not limited on the legal matters themselves, but go also into social complexities which have to be considered for the understanding of the way each national nuclear policy works. International relationships are focused as an important interface in the role played by legal aspects of nuclear development