India's nuclear establishment backs nuclear liability bill

The country's atomic establishment today threw its weight behind the civil nuclear liability bill in the face of the stand-off between the government and the Opposition and said there is a lot of "misunderstanding" about the regime.
  
Pitching for enactment of a law to fix civil damages caused by nuclear accidents, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Srikumar Banerjee said neither the Indian Environmental
Protection Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991, nor the
Indian Atomic Energy Act had provisions for damages caused due
to war or radioactivity.

"Therefore, this legislation assumes great significance in the present context," he told PTI. Currently and in the near future, the state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) will be the only operator of nuclear power plants, he added.

With the Opposition unrelenting on its opposition to the legislation, the government on Monday beat a hasty retreat and deferred the introduction of the the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill in Parliament.

"India does not have a law for fixing civil liability for damages caused by the nuclear industry. The government wants to introduce the Bill after a very careful study, but unfortunately there is lot of misunderstanding about it among the Parliamentarians which has to be corrected," Banerjee said.

Banerjee's views came against the backdrop of the government launching a bid to salvage the Bill whose passage is a must for full implementation of the Indo-US civil nuclear deal.

The views of the country's top boss were also echoed by two former AEC chairmen Anil Kakodkar and M R Srinivasan. 

"The Department of Atomic Energy has been working on the bill along with legal experts and the Centre for over a decade,"  Banerjee said and added that of the 30 countries operating nuclear power plants 28, barring India and Pakistan, had such legislations in place. "It is high time India has its own legislation soon."

"It is only when we have a national legislation in place, would it be easier to harmonise with the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC) of International Atomic Energy Agency which is yet to come into force," Banerjee said.

Within the country, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) will assess the scale of event (accident) to the Nuclear Damage Claims Commission which will have one or more claims commissioners for a specified area, he said.

The proposed introduction of the bill on March 15 had united the entire opposition, which was unanimous on the view that the legislation was aimed at benefiting the foreign suppliers of nuclear reactors, particularly those from the US, in case of accidents as while capping the liability of operators at Rs 500 crore it spared the suppliers any damage liability.

The opposition felt that by capping the liability of the operators at Rs 500 crore while overall liability was capped at Rs 2,200 crore, the government wanted to burden the taxpayer.

The passage of the bill is necessary for implementing the Indo-US civil nuclear deal and securing CSC membership for India that will enable it to access enhanced amount of money  from an international corpus in the event of a nuclear accident.

"It is better to make sure to have protection as we do not want any litigation. Today, a person can take advantage of Law of Tort (under which the fault has to be established before compensation can be granted) but the fault has to be established first and is a great pain," Banerjee said. 

"Therefore, a defined liability law has to be in place," he said.

Across the world, the liability is limited to the operator to ensure speedy compensation to the victims. The operator can, however, hold the suppliers accountable for supplying defective equipment by incorporating relevant clauses in their agreement.

Asked about fixing a liability cap at Rs 500 crore on the operators, the Atomic Energy Commission chairman said, the company (NPCIL) had to give financial security to the government and if no amount was fixed how would it be possible to determine the insurance premium. 

This amount, he said, could be lowered or increased depending on the type of event (accident) and its impact on the surroundings.