A is the operator of a nuclear power plant. Due to a sudden breakdown of the cooling system, the surrounding land is contaminated by radioactive substances. The breakdown was caused by company C who had been in charge of the recent revision of the cooling system. Neighbour B suffers a loss.

1. Who is liable? What kind of damage may B claim?

2. Would it make any difference if the contamination was the result of a continuous process instead of a sudden incident?

Comparative remarks

Comparison

Liability for nuclear power plants is mainly regulated by international law, namely, the Paris and Brussels Conventions. In Belgium, the Paris and Brussels Conventions were implemented by the Act of 22 July 1985, which was amended by the Act of 11 July 2000. Under the amendment, liability for the operator is limited to €300 million. In France, nuclear power plants are operated by the state-owned Electricité de France (EDF). As an établissement public industriel et commercial, EDF can be sued in civil court, though, according to special legislation, only the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris has jurisdiction. Liability is governed by Law No. 68-943 of 30 October 1968, as amended by Law No. 90-488 of 16 June 1990, and is limited to €90 million per accident. In the United Kingdom, the Paris Convention was implemented by the Nuclear Installations Acts of 1965 and 1969. The liability cap is currently £140 million.

Goal of the Questionnaire

Background to the project and methodological remarks

The project forms part of the comprehensive comparative project entitled The Common Core of European Private Law, based in Trento, Italy. The work, started in 1999, seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of the private law aspects of environmental liability in fourteen jurisdictions from thirteen European countries. The original intent was to cover each of the – at the time when the project was conceived – fifteen Member States of the European Union, but it became apparent that it was impossible to find reporters from Denmark and Luxembourg. The participants in the project, mostly academics and some practitioners with a strong academic background, were selected according to their expertise in the field of the private environmental liability law of their home country. When reading the reports, it is obvious that the results differ, from very scholarly and sophisticated reports to rather short and pragmatic answers, thus reflecting not only the individual approach of the reporter but also the different legal traditions of the countries covered by the project.

The project applies the methodology of the Common Core project as a whole. It follows a strict analytical perspective with the goal of describing the existing law without the intention of qualifying the national solutions from a certain perspective. It was thus not intended to assess the national jurisdictions in terms of environmental protection standards or to achieve further harmonisation in this field of law.