Mastering International Waste Risks through International Law

Extract

[...] The management of these waste therefore extends over several hundred years, and requires full cooperation, both in space, between states, and in time, between several generations. This notion of generation is particularly important in this matter: we will see later that it inspires the entire spirit of international regulation on international waste, through the concept of responsibility towards future generations". For international law to take hold of this object, it must first define. Or the diversity of these wastes makes it very complex to define a comprehensive definition of radioactive waste. [...]

[...] We will study successively these two responses that international law provides for the management of international waste. (1. Mastering the risks related to international waste by international law) The international character The fact that the management of radioactive waste is not surprising, given that the management of waste itself is largely international, relying on a wide cooperation between States in order to preserve the security of each. Two legal approaches, however, aim to master the risks related to international waste, sometimes incompatible: an international approach on the one hand, a European approach on the other hand. [...]

[...] The diversity of sources) The public international law has sought to find general solutions intended to enable such compensation. The the sources of this law are very diverse In this regard and inspired by the work carried out both by internationalist doctrine, the International Law Commission and the IAEA. Two different regimes must be described, which have given rise to multiple difficulties in their articulation. The first source is the Paris Convention, signed on 29 July 1960 under the auspices of the European Atomic Energy Community, now the European Nuclear Energy Agency. [...]

[...] Radioactive waste is above all a waste. International sources diverge as to the exact definition of the term waste: for the 1989 Basel Convention, which we will discuss later, it is the 'objects or substances that are disposed of, that are intended to be disposed of or that must be disposed of according to the provisions of national law ». The European Union, for its part, defines it as 'any object or substance whose owner must dispose of it or intends to». [...]

[...] The agencies responsible for these two texts, the Nuclear Energy Agency and the International Atomic Energy Agency, therefore worked towards a convergence of the two standards. It was concretized by the signature, on September of a Common Protocol Relating to the Application of the Paris and Vienna Conventions, in force since 1992. It is in this Common Protocol and in the numerous modifying protocols of these two conventions that most of the substantive rules applicable in the matter of liability for the poor management of radioactive waste are found. [...]