Research On Financial Guarantee System Of Nuclear Damage Risk

With the development of the civil use of nuclear energy,the safety of nuclear facilities has drawn the attention of the whole society.Even if the highest standards of nuclear safety measures are adopted,the nuclear damage accidents cannot be avoided totally.In order to protect the victims’ rights after suffering nuclear damage,the financial guarantee system of nuclear damage risk has been established in international conventions and domestic law,operators are required to provide financial guarantees before operating nuclear facilities.The 1960 Paris Convention is the first International Convention on liability for nuclear damage in the world,it provides the obligation of operators to provide financial assurance,and improves the financial guarantee system through subsequent amendments.The Brussels Supplementary Convention provides a multi-level financial guarantee system for nuclear damage compensation,it requires the operators to buy liability insurance and pay for public funds established by themselves.The Vienna Convention also explicitly requires operators to purchase liability insurance or provide other form of financial guarantees.The United States has set up a three-level financial guarantee compensation system,and sets up a liability limit for operators,the operator must provide financial guarantees according to the limit of liability.After the Fukushima nuclear accident,Japan’s original financial guarantee system has also been improved.At present,almost all the world’s major nuclear power countries have stipulated the financial guarantee system of nuclear damage risk in their legislation of nuclear damage compensation.There are three main forms of financial guarantee for nuclear damage risk:the operators of a nuclear facility purchase nuclear third-party liability insurance;the second form is the operators set up a nuclear self-insurance company or a nuclear mutual insurance organization to provide insurance protection for themselves;and the third form is the operators set up a fund for nuclear damage compensation.The financial guarantee methods adopted by Chinese operators are liability insurance and mutual aid organization of nuclear operators,which have made great progress in practice,but still exists many problems.Through the comparative study with international conventions and foreign countries legislative experience,this paper believes that China should improve its financial guarantee system of nuclear damage risk from two aspects:One is to establish and improve nuclear third party liability insurance system,and the other is to develop a specialized nuclear damage compensation fund.In the future,the law should be established to improve insurance system of nuclear damage risk,clarify the compensation sequence of different financial guarantee methods,and establish penalty measures for operators when they donnot provide financial guarantee.