REPROCESSING OF NUCLEAR FUEL: CERTAIN LEGAL ISSUES ARISING FROM THIS UNIQUE TECHNOLOGY
Main Article Content
Abstract
A key, nearly unique, characteristic of nuclear energy is that spent fuel may be reprocessed to recover fissile materials to provide fresh fuel for existing and future nuclear installations. United Kingdom, France, Russian Federation, China, India and Japan have policies to reprocess spent fuel, although government policies in many other countries have not yet come to seeing spent fuel as a resource rather than a waste. In 1997, the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management reaffirmed the right of the State to define its own fuel cycle policy, i.e. either to consider spent fuel as a resource that may be reprocessed, or to dispose it as waste. Further, the Convention also reconfirmed the right of its Contracting Parties to export spent fuel for reprocessing in a third country and its return to the State of origin. This article is dealing with topical legal issues arising from this unique technology.
Article Details
Copyright and originality of the offered manuscript
1. It is assumed that the manuscript offered has not been previously published. It is expected that the authors will inform the editorial board of TLQ if the entire manuscript, its parts or some relevant results have been previously published in a different publication at the level of an article in a reviewed scientific magazine or monograph. Should the editorial board of TLQ conclude that this condition was not fulfilled the review process may be terminated.
2. It is assumed that the submitted manuscript is an original academic work. If that is not the case the author needs to provide information regarding all circumstances that could raise doubts whether the manuscript is the outcome of original research.
3. By submitting the manuscript the author acknowledges that after the publication in The Lawyer Quarterly her/his work will be made available online to the Internet users and also kept by the Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Author's rights to further use the work remain unabridged.