CYIL 2014

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THE BRUSSELS CONVENTION ON THE LIABILITY OF OPERATORS OF NUCLEAR SHIPS

national legislation, creating for the licensing state a very good reason to provide for

reasonably high coverage in order to minimize the necessity they supply it.

Finally, the Convention, Article XV (2) provided for one circumstance under

which the limitation is not applicable. This is for the circumstance where a nuclear-

powered ship flies the flag of a contracting party but was not licensed or authorized

at the time of the incident.

Provisions concerning jurisdiction

Various proposals were put forth at the Brussels Diplomatic Conference, aiming

to find a practical compromise between conflicting desires to formulate the rules

of jurisdiction. E.g. the Soviet Union preferred to anchor the principle of the sole

jurisdiction of the licensing state and in the case that such a solution will be not

accepted by the majority of delegation, it favored that the matters will be handled by

a conciliation commission. France, Italy and the United Arab Republic considered

that the jurisdiction should be by the licensing state or by the coastal states within 50

or 100 miles of the place where the incident occurred.

On one hand, there was the interest among operators to concentrate jurisdiction

over all claims in the courts of the licensing state, as provided for the land-based

reactors in the Paris Convention and in the Vienna Convention. On the other hand,

while most states participating in the formulating of the Paris and Vienna Conventions

were potentially to host land-based installations, few of the states taking part in the

Conference presumed to launch and license nuclear-powered vessels.

Therefore, they

favored victims having the possibility to claim in the court of their domicile.

Finally, the Convention established a

dual

jurisdictional scheme, as proposed by

the United States, together with Denmark, Norway and the United Kingdom:

– pursuant to the Article X (1), the victim has possibility to claim either by the court of

the licensing state or by the court of those contracting party, on whose territory the

nuclear damage was sustained,

– pursuant to the Article X (3), the jurisdiction of the court of the licensing state is

exclusively for the claims in respect of a warship,

– pursuant to the Article XI (1) and (3), only the court of the licensing state is responsible

for establishing the “limitation fund”, while having the obligation to recognize the

final judgments of any other court having jurisdiction.

Interim nature of the Convention

Article XXVI (1), which provides for a Revision Conference after the Convention

has been in force for five years, underlines the experimental and interim character

of this international agreement.

Having the future holding of this Revision

Conference in mind, the Brussels Diplomatic Conference commissioned the post-

Op. cit.

sub note 7, at p. 307.

Op. cit.

sub note 11, at p. 103.

Op. cit.

sub note 2, at p. 14.

Op. cit.

sub note 4, at p. 558.