By Biswajit Choudhury,
New Delhi : Lack of clarity on India’s nuclear damage liability law has held up faster development of its civil nuclear programme, one of the country’s leading experts in the field says.
The ambiguity on the liability law attaches to both the quantitative and legal implications of the legislation, says Anil Kakodkar, former secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy of the Indian government.
“Things are still on behind us on the issue of the nuclear liability act, as to what this means for industry in quantitative terms,” Kakodkar, currently Homi Bhabha Professor at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Trombay, told IANS in an interview here on the sidelines of a conference on nuclear energy.
“There are several interpretations to quantitative liability. The government should articulate what it means in clear terms,” he said.
Kakodkar said the ambiguities attach even to the legal implications of the law.
“It is not clear whether suppliers, after an incident, would be subject to legal pursuit by any public authority. It needs to be clarified that but for criminal liability, the supplier should be free of the implications of other laws,” he said.
The former director of BARC said that an independent legal policy think tank, the Mumbai-based Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, is looking into the ambiguities that remain in the liability law. The group presented a report to the parliamentary standing committee at the time the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, 2010, was being discussed in parliament.
The non-profit Council on Energy, Environment and Water is currently going into the quantitative ramifications of India’s nuclear liability act and what it implies for the viability of industry, Kakodkar said.
Russia’s concerns over the operator’s responsibility in the law have stalled agreement on Unit 3 and 4 of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) in Tamil Nadu, hinging on the reinsurance of the risk. The first unit of the plant, which went on stream earlier this year, has been shut down due to what the Russian manufacturers describe as a “minor” glitch.
Russia’s position was that the law, which makes the suppliers financially liable in the event of an accident, was unnecessary in its civil nuclear partnership with India. It has said the cost of the supplied equipment would increase significantly if the suppliers were made accountable.
Unlike Kudankulam 3 and 4, the first and second units will function independent of the liability law.
Pointing out that nuclear technology is no longer a constraint for the country after years of embargo on India’s nuclear trading imposed by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), access to uranium fuel is also now possible with the various international energy cooperation agreements India has signed after the NSG granted its waiver.
“It is the rate of capacity addition that is the problem in the short-term and the lack of clarity on the law is putting off investors. Many public sector units wanting to invest in the field have confided that they are unable to hold on much longer while these uncertainties persist,” he said.
The Department of Atomic Energy has asked the finance ministry to form a nuclear insurance pool after the state-run General Insurance Corp (GIC) was unable to insure the two new Kudankulam units.
(Biswajit Choudhury can be reached at [email protected])