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Low risk installations
Further, the Vienna Convention envisages the possibility of an Installation
State to exclude any
small quantities of nuclear material
from the application of this
Convention, provided that maximum limits for the exclusion of such quantities have
been established by the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy
Agency; and any exclusion by an Installation State is within such established limits.
The maximum limits shall be reviewed periodically by the Board of Governors.
However, unlike the Paris Convention,
60
the Vienna Convention does not envisage
the possibility to exclude “low risk installations” from the scope of applicability of
the Convention. In particular, this provision might be of importance for some types
of
research reactors
, but also for some types of
small nuclear reactors
.
61
Consequently,
the Amended Vienna Convention contains a new provision
62
which allows such
exclusion, provided that criteria for such exclusion have been established by the Board
of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Conclusions
Since the adoption of the Vienna Convention, the issue of its applicability on
various types of nuclear installations has been a matter of scientific discussions.
When the Convention was drafted, the question of hazards arising from certain uses
of nuclear materials was not yet fully understood. The lack of explicit provisions
concerning these uses in the Convention is due to the fact that, when the Convention
was drafted, the development of nuclear energy was in its infancy, and there was little
concern about activities at the back end of the fuel cycle.
However, most recently, problems have arisen from the disposal of radioactive
waste, the decommissioning of nuclear installations and also from the launching
of new nuclear technologies (
e.g.
floating nuclear power plants, nuclear fission
etc.
)
which again raised questions concerning the applicability of the liability regime of this
Convention to various types of technologies. In this respect, the Amended Vienna
Convention strengthens the existing legal framework and constitutes an appropriate
tool to cope with the challenges discussed in this contribution.
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The Paris Convention provides in Art. 1 /b/, that the Steering Committee may, if in its view the
small extent of the risks involved so warrants, exclude any nuclear installation, nuclear fuel, or nuclear
substances from the application of this Convention.
61
See RILEY, P. Institutional Challenges to Mini Nuclear Power Plants: A Way Forward, In
Nuclear Inter
Jura 2009,
Toronto: INLA, 2009, at pp. 153-162.
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Art. I. Par. 2.