Sublegislative regulatory systems and bodies

The author discusses the character of the legal regulatory systems with a view to the relationship between risk and evaluation, puts the current regulatory instruments for control of technological risks into the context of the national constitutional law and then discusses the legal bodies authorised to make technical standards for application in the field of nuclear law. The legal requirements and obligations concerning the bodies' types of organisation and their working procedures are subsequently used to develop the criteria for an assessment of the suggested reform of the Atomic Energy Act. The author's conclusion is that the draft reform fails to comply with the standards and criteria developed by the author. In the field of law under review, which is characterized by a close concatenation of scientific-technological knowledge and legal control and thus is the crucial 'test bed' for the development of a modern law for environmental protection, there are developments to be stated leading to the right direction. But the draft does not keep what the labels sticked to it by the Government promise: The draft does not create 'a modern law for advanced safety of nuclear installations', nor does it contribute substantially to 'reaching an all party consensus about the peaceful uses of atomic energy'. (orig./HP)