The UK is a contracting party to the Paris Convention on nuclear third party liability and Brussels Supplementary Convention. The convention's aim is to ensure adequate and fair compensation for victims who suffer damage as a result of a nuclear incident at a nuclear installation or during the transport of nuclear substances to and from that installation. At the same time, it is aimed at ensuring the installation operators – who are in the best position to ensure the safety of their installation – take responsibility for any failure in safety. The convention also ensures compensation in the case of nuclear damage across borders.
The convention imposes no fault liability on the designated operator of the nuclear installation that causes damage. It channels all liability to that operator so that victims can sue an identifiable operator, and victims in all parties to the convention should have equal access to the compensation.
The countries that have ratified the Paris Convention are Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the UK.
Amendments to the convention were agreed in 2004. They upgrade the existing regime and are intended to ensure that in the event of a nuclear incident, an increased amount of compensation will be available to a larger number of victims in respect to a broader range of damage that is currently the case.
The amendments to the convention are not yet in force. This will take place once the amendments have been ratified by the signatories to the conventions. The signatories that are also EU member states are required to ratify the amendments at the same time.
The UK is committed to ratifying the amended conventions as soon as possible. In order for the UK to be able to ratify the amendments however, we need to implement the changes to the convention in UK law. We intend to do this by amending the Nuclear Installations Act 1965 through secondary legislation made under section 76 of the Energy Act 2004.