Nuke liability rules are not US-specific: expert

Bangalore: The recently notified liability rules largely concern the domestic suppliers and are not America-specific at all, a key member of the Indian nuclear establishment said today. Member of the Atomic Energy Commission MR Srinivasan was responding to criticism that the rules are aimed at meeting the concerns of American nuclear suppliers wary of being exposed to unlimited liability in the event of Fukushima-type accident involving any of their reactors. [caption id=“attachment_142471” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“MR Srinivasan said recourse claims being capped for first five years is “certainly alright”. AFP Photo”]  [/caption] “Americans are not building reactors now. If that happens, it will happen in future. Not now,” member of said. “It’s not America-specific at all. We are talking about Indian suppliers,” he said. According to the rules, recourse claims are limited to accidents in first five years. Srinivasan, also former secretary in the Department of Atomic Energy, underlined that the rules largely concern thousands of entities in India that supply a whole lot of equipment to India’s nuclear programme. “Naturally, if the supplier supplies Rs 1 crore worth of equipment, for example, you cannot make him take a liability for 50 years… for unlimited thousands of crores of (rupees) of liability”, Srinivasan said. He said recourse claims being capped for first five years is “certainly alright”, noting that operators keep on making various technological changes and should take all the responsibility for their acts. “Suppliers can only assure the product’s integrity,” he said. When it was pointed out that Fukushima happened almost three decades after the initial reactor supply, Srinivasan said it’s not the result of suppliers’ indifference; it’s because of the “bad decision” of the company to locate the plant at a “lower level” and not higher. He termed the rules “reasonable, pragmatic and positive”. “Neither one extreme, nor the other. It’s fair to the operators, it’s fair to the suppliers”. PTI