^^^ The brouhaha over the Civil nuclear liability Bill is further instance of anything incremental to our current setup being described as a sellout..
Key components of the law (as we can glean from press reports):
1. Liability of compensation to be on the operator of the plant, not the equipment supplier. That is standard practice in wrold nuclear trade, and has been formalised by both multilateral treaties (like the IAEA/OECD conventions) or by national laws (like the American Price Henderson Act).
2. Limiting the liability of each accident/plant at 2500 crores, ie, about USD 550 million..The Paris/BRussels convention of OECD marks out maximum liability at 360 million euros, or about 500 million dollars as of now..The Americans put an individual operator liability at 300 million dollars, and an overarching industry cover on top..
More details here..
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Civil_li ... ear_damage
Without knowing the fineprint of our legislation, just on the broad generalities, by having this law we are simply joinng the international mainstream on nuclear regulation!
As of now, our laws allow only 26% private ownership of plant operation. There is no reason why in future as more plants come up and investments become necessary, that limit wont be raised for safeguarded reactor operation..In which case the same law will apply to the private operator, as opposed to public sector NPCIL only (as of now)...
ving contributed to unauthorised proliferation of these weapons of mass destruction.”
