Fixing Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage- A Study with Special Reference to the civil liability for nuclear Damage Act 2010

Abstract

In a country, if the source of energy flops to regulate environmental and political costs, it may cause material hardship and economic distress. Whenever energy is insufficient or expensive, humankind may suffer material hardship and economic distress. It can even threaten the human prosperity there, in a rudimentary and common way. The ‗energy problem‘ today is a mixture of many considerate problems such as the basic need for energy for all human beings is not satisfied till now; the available energy is highly expensive; and also its impact on environment is increasing day by day etc.2 Sources of energy all over here can either be conventional like coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear materials etc. or be non-conventional like sunlight, wind, tide etc. As of now all the conventional energy sources are considered as governing dealers of many layers of environmental problems say global, regional and local. Globally, production of energy is facing the problems like pollution of air, soil, water, and ocean. It also causes climate change. The twenty times increase in global power consumption from 1850 onwards may be the major reason behind it3. Similarly enervation of non-renewable conventional sources of energy causes certain other problems like scarcity of fuel due to increasing diminution of some best expedient oil and gas resources. Handling all these energy complications need significantly amplified use of most modern techniques in cultivating energy worldwide. This caused the increase in choice of more expensive and/or ecologically more troublesome power generating techniques. From the second half of twentieth century onwards the world had given a better preference to the use of ‗nuclear power‘ instead of adopting any such complicated techniques. It is intended to decrease the environmental intrusions of other modern energy tools, and also to have a changeover for the coming years to have a less costly but probably more sustainable sources of energy. Due to their high amount of population and consequential burden on economy and resources, developing countries were reluctant to use nuclear power extremely highly in the beginning. The world aims 3 kilowatts of per capita rate of energy use as a measure of high standard of living, even if it is literally considered as very low. If so, a global population steadied at about ten billion may consume about 30 terawatts of energy, and a populace of fourteen billion may infer forty two terawatts, by relating it with the 13.2 terawatts energy use in 19904. The most recommended modern technology for sustainable supply of energy is of course the nuclear power generation. But the increasing connection in between atomic power sector and atomic armaments is a socio-political hazard5. Even then it was recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC)6. According to them atomic energy is the crucial alleviation technology which is presently accessible in the market7. The prospect of nuclear energy could go one or the other way, within this sphere either by getting acceptance to it or by parting it behind for other available choices of energy. Policies involving nuclear energy vary widely from region to region. Countries such as Japan are phasing out nuclear power completely due to their terrible experience with the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, and others like China just starting big expansion so as to combat the overwhelming air pollution problem. The debate between fossil fuels, nuclear energy, nuclear plants, and renewable energy sources has been going on in one way or another since nuclear energy‘s start. There is no clear-cut solution, and it is unlikely that a unanimous or even majority, decision or opinion will ever be reached8.The data taken from International Energy Agency (IEA) from 1990 to 2008, the per capita energy consumption is increased by 10% whereas the increase of world population is around 27%9. Since 2007, there is a slight change and downward trend in the annual generation of nuclear power. It had decreased 1.8% in 2009 to about 2558 TWh, and around 1.6% in 2011 into 2518 TWh, notwithstanding the upsurges in manufacture of nuclear energy in many of the nation globally, since all these upsurges were equalised by declines of nuclear power in Germany and Japan. Instead of the widely used commercial nuclear reactors some ideas are there to have nuclear fusion energy in forthcoming new reactors. Also there are numerous experiments on nuclear fusion reactors worldwide just like International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)10.