Nuclear Energy

arm of Indian big industry, had extended its strong support to the passage of the bill through the
Indian Parliament, saying that it was essential for participation of both domestic and foreign
suppliers in India's nuclear program. And when the debate between the government and the
opposition intensified over the inclusion of Clause 17 (b), which allows the operator to sue suppliers
in case of defective equipment, FICCI came out strongly for deletion of the clause, arguing that the
clause “is neither implementable” nor “justified” and “not desirable”, and that it will “completely
undo the Government’s efforts to accelerate nuclear power generation in our country.” cdlvi
Supreme Court Decisions Violated
By freeing the foreign suppliers of all liabilities in case of an accident at a reactor supplied
by them, the Law violates the principle of absolute and strict liability laid down by the Supreme
Court wherein the Court ruled: “Once the activity carried on is… potentially hazardous, the person
carrying on such activity is liable to make good the loss… irrespective [of] whether he took
reasonable care…” cdlvii Since a nuclear reactor is inherently hazardous, by an extension of this
principle, at the very least the foreign supplier of the reactor should be held equally responsible for
an accident along with the operator, irrespective of whether there was a design fault or not.
The Law also violates the right to full compensation which has been interpreted by the
Supreme Court to be a part of Right to Life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. Known
as the Polluter’s Pay Principle, according to this tenet a polluting industry has to not only fully
compensate the victims for the accident, it must also fully bear the costs of restoring the
environmental degradation. The Nuclear Liability Law violates this principle by artificially capping
the total compensation that would be paid out in case of an accident at 300 million SDRs, which
translates into a measly $460 million, which is even lower than the compensation of $470 million
approved by the Supreme Court of India for the victims of the Bhopal gas disaster way back in
1989, and which is universally considered shamefully inadequate. If exchange-rate changes and
inflation are taken into account, the sum works out to about one-third of what the Bhopal victims
got, cdlviii whereas a nuclear accident can be many hundreds of times bigger than the Bhopal gas
tragedy! An accident like the Chernobyl reactor core meltdown of 1986 can wreak damage running
into hundreds of billions to several trillions of dollars, and make huge swathes of land uninhabitable
for centuries. Among the countries having a liability law (which limits the liability of the nuclear
operators), US, Germany, Finland, Japan, South Korea and Switzerland have not placed any cap on
maximum liability (the excess amount will of course be paid by the government). cdlix
Liability Legislation: No International Obligation
Even assuming that the country needs nuclear energy and needs to import nuclear reactors,
there was no need to enact a liability legislation. The media and the government of India have
created the impression that India needed to pass a liability legislation in order to become compliant
with international nuclear liability instruments (like the Convention on Supplementary
Compensation for Nuclear Damage, which India signed on October 27, 2010, two months after the
Nuclear Liability Bill cleared Parliament,), and that this was necessary for India to engage in
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