CYIL vol. 13 (2022)

MATT SAVINI CYIL 13 ȍ2022Ȏ accident if the nation of the operator is a party to and liable under the Paris and Vienna Convention. 41 Under these provisions, the transporter is indemnified. 42 Additionally, from the post-Chernobyl IAEA regime, the Protocol to the Vienna Convention was revised to cover damages for nuclear shipment accident and that damages can be recovered by coastal states when an accident occurs in the exclusive economic zone of the coastal state. 43 The international nuclear liability law as demonstrated is comprised of a number of treaties however, the ratification and enactment are not comprehensive. Although the Paris Convention went into force in 1968 applicable to OECD nations and the Vienna Convention was ratified by thirty-eight nations in 1977, there is not a single regime that the major nuclear world powers are parties to. 44 Not a party to any other convention, the United States ratified the CSC in 2008. 45 B. United States Nuclear Liability Law As identified in the evaluation of the state of international nuclear liability law, the United States is only recently a party to the CSC but not to the Paris Convention or Vienna Convention regimes. However, the legal framework in the United States follows similar principles but also has distinctions. The commercial atomic age was legally initiated in the United States with the enactment of the Atomic Energy Act in 1947 which created the AEC and authorized it to control civilian nuclear energy. 46 Subsequently, the government took the next step to encourage commercialization of nuclear power in the Atomic Energy Act amendments of 1954 which also appointed the AEC to oversee safety of the application. 47 In 1974, Congress dissolved the AEC, replacing it with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (“NRC”) with the authority to regulate civil nuclear applications. 48 To address the potential liability of damages arising from a major nuclear accident, Congress then passed another amendment to the Atomic Energy Act in the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act of 1957 (“Price-Anderson”). 49 The act required the operators of nuclear facilities to carry private insurance for $60 million in damages of such a nuclear event and created $500 million in government funding for additional compensation. 50 Price-Anderson creates strict liability for nuclear operators through defining a nuclear event as an extraordinary nuclear occurrence (“ENO”) which, if determined so by the NRC, removes all tort law defenses to the operator. 51 Consequently, this structure creates an umbrella policy that a third party can be covered under the operator’s insurance. 52

41 Id. 42 Id.

43 Id. at 590. 44 Id. at 586. 45 Id. at 590–91. 46 § 6:18. Nuclear power, supra note 9.

47 Id. 48 Id. 49 O’CONNELL, W. D., Causation’s Nuclear Future: Applying Proportional Liability to the Price-Anderson Act, 64 Duke L.J. 333, 335 (2014). 50 Id. 51 FAURE, M. G., supra note 26, at 241. 52 Id. at 242.

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