but since 2010 I've been working at the agency so I'm no longer in fact doing research as an academic but at the time when I was working at the university I spent three years also in Trieste working as an associate professor at the University of Trieste so a wonderful recollection of my three years in Trieste, a wonderful city and I'm very happy to be back every year for the Nuclear Energy Management School. So my first lecture today is an introductory lecture on the legal framework for nuclear safety. I don't need to go into the objective of this part of nuclear law because Patrick's introduction has already covered this in a rather comprehensive way. The objective of nuclear safety law is to provide a legal framework for conducting activities related to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy in a manner which adequately protects individuals property and the environment. Although this lecture will be specifically related to the legal framework for nuclear safety there are obvious interactions among the various areas of nuclear law which can be visually presented in this slide. Nuclear safety, nuclear security and safeguards which is the other main area of nuclear law which in the Office of Legal Affairs we describe as the 3S, the 3S is safety security and safeguards which are also the three aspects of a national comprehensive nuclear law, three main aspects of a national comprehensive nuclear law. There are obvious interactions among these areas although we treat them for practical purposes differently as if there were no interaction but in fact there are a number of interactions. Nuclear liability stands a little bit on its own but as I will try to explain when I do deal with nuclear liability in one of my next lecture there are also interactions in a way between safety security and safeguards on the one hand and liability on the other. Generally speaking when we look at the international legal framework for nuclear safety we see that there is not one single instrument at the international level which deals with nuclear safety in a comprehensive manner. This is the result of history because various aspects of nuclear safety have been dealt with in different international legal instruments and also the other main thing to point out it was already referred to by Patrick in his introductory lecture we have both binding and non-binding legal instruments. This is a pattern that we will see also in other areas of nuclear law in particular in the area of nuclear security which will be the subject of my next lecture. We will see also that in also in nuclear security there is this duality between legally binding on the one hand and non-legally binding instruments on the other hand. Liability is again a little bit special because in the area of liability we only have legally binding instruments so we have treaties which deal with civil liability for nuclear damage whereas in the area of nuclear safety and also in the area of nuclear security we have treaties which are binding on the state's parties to these treaties but we also have another a number of other instruments which are sometimes called codes of conduct sometimes called safety standards in the area of nuclear security they're called nuclear security recommendations for example which are not legally binding so this is the distinction between so-called hard law and soft law that Patrick was referring to. I don't like to emphasize this distinction because I don't know how many of you are lawyers probably not very many in this room so you're not very familiar with the special character of international law as opposed to national law. International law is very different from national law because it is the expression of a society of sovereign states. It's not the expression of a society of individuals who are in the framework of a hierarchical structure where there is the state which in principle has the monopoly to produce legal rules and also to enforce legal rules in case of a violation that is typical of national society. In international law there is very little of this precisely because international law is the expression of a society of sovereign states not of individuals of states which are theoretically all on the same level and are not within a hierarchical structure. Yes there is the United Nations nowadays but the United Nations has very little legislative and enforcement powers over sovereign states so the distinction between hard law and soft law in international law should not be overemphasized because even hard law instruments which are theoretically legally binding very rarely have real enforcement mechanisms that can be resorted to in case of a violation. So in practice this distinction between soft law and hard law is not very significant. It's significant at the theoretical level because if there is a dispute between two states and one of them accuses the other of violating a treaty in theory this dispute could end up for a tribunal an arbitral tribunal or the international court of justice in the Hague but this happens very rarely at the international level and in most cases such disputes are resolved by diplomatic means without necessarily having to resort to tribunals or court which is the normal way of solving disputes at the national level. There is another reason why this distinction should not be overemphasized between binding and non-binding and that is that this distinction is relevant if we look at these instruments at the international level in the relations between states. States are not obliged in the case of non-binding instruments to abide by the rules contained in these instruments which are only recommendations so there is no obligation to abide by these rules whereas in the case of binding instruments there is in principle an obligation to abide by these rules. But most of these rules whether they are contained in a binding instrument or in a non-binding instrument are expected to be complied with by each state not in its international relations but within the state itself because they obliged the state to do something at the national level for example to ensure in this case that there is an adequate level of nuclear safety of nuclear installations and of nuclear material or of radiological material and other and facilities where radiological material is being used or processed. So this kind of obligation has to be implemented by the state by enacting rules at the national level normally at the level of legislation but also at a lower level through regulations implementing more general rules that are usually contained in legislation. So when the state does that these national rules which have been adopted by the state are binding at the national level and it's not important anymore whether or not at the international level there was an obligation to adopt these rules or not because once the state has adopted these rules these rules are binding at the international level. So even a code of conduct for example which is a typical example of a non-binding instrument it's non-binding because it doesn't oblige the state to enact rules at the national level that comply with this code of conduct but if the state does adopt these rules at the national level these national rules are then binding at the national level and therefore at the national level it's not so important for the people who are engaged in the day-to-day application of nuclear law whether or not certain rules were adopted because there was an obligation to adopt them which was set up in a treaty or even if there was no obligation but the state decided that it was a good idea to comply with the rules for example in a code of conduct. So this is why this distinction is very important at the national level at the international level but it's not so important at the national at the national level. Let's have a quick look at the various of the most important instruments that exist in the area of nuclear safety starting with the binding instruments so the international treaties that have been adopted in this area. We have the Convention on Nuclear Safety, we have the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Management and we have the two conventions on what is known as Emergency Preparedness and Response, the Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident, the Convention on Assistance in case of a nuclear accident or radiological emergency. All of these are binding instruments. Each of them has been adopted to regulate a different area of nuclear safety. We will go a little bit more into the scope of application of these conventions recently. So they all deal with one aspect. Even the Convention on Nuclear Safety which has a very general title in fact only applies to the safety of nuclear power plants. So a very specific aspect, very important but a very specific aspect of nuclear safety. Other aspects of nuclear safety even if the title is very general are not regulated by this convention, they're regulated by the Joint Convention or by the Convention on Early Notification or by the Convention on Assistance. There is another aspect of this distinction between binding and non-binding. I think Patrick mentioned that it's, I think he mentioned that it's more important, it's more difficult for states to agree to rules that are contained in a binding instruments than it is for them to agree to rules that are in a non-binding instrument because when states negotiate the text of a treaty, you know, they think, oh, this is going to be binding so I better be careful and, you know, in the negotiations there are different positions usually and each state strongly abides by what it considers as its national interest and in the end the inevitable result is that of a compromise which is not necessarily the best solution if you look at it from the objective point of view of what should be done to ensure nuclear safety because states were fighting with each other, I want this, I want that, I don't want this, I don't want that and in the end they come up with a compromise solution that is acceptable to everyone which may be the lowest common denominator among the various states. When it comes to non-binding instruments it's much easier to agree on rules which, you know, maybe are more effective, they're more general, they're more, and that explains the pattern whereby we have separate instruments dealing with specific and separate aspects of nuclear safety because at one point states decided, oh, yeah, we need something binding but it's only for nuclear power plants, the rest can be dealt with by non-binding instruments. Then they realized that there needs to be a binding treaty on other aspects of nuclear safety and then they adopt the joint convention on the safety of radioactive, of spent fuel management and the radioactive waste management and even before that they had realized that there was a need for conventions in the area of early notification and assistance and they adopted these conventions. For the time being other areas of nuclear law are not covered by binding instruments but are covered by non-binding instruments and I would say even if in the case of the joint convention as we will see later usually the tendency by states is to adopt binding instruments only for those activities which are considered the most dangerous, the ones that potentially could cause the greatest harm to people, the environmental property, in particular those relating to the nuclear fuel cycle. When it comes to radioactive material other than nuclear material such as radioactive sources then the perception is these are not as dangerous or facilities which deal with radioactive sources, the perception is these are not so dangerous as nuclear power plants or nuclear material being transported from one nuclear power plant to the other, then we don't really need a binding instruments, we can just have a code of conduct. Now this is exactly what happened in the area of radioactive sources which are not covered by the convention on nuclear safety. We have a code of conduct on the safety and security of radioactive sources which is a non-binding international legal instruments. Another interesting aspect of this code of conduct is that it deals within a single instrument both with the safety and with the security aspects of radioactive sources which is something very exceptional in nuclear law because there is a tendency of states you know to treat nuclear safety separately from nuclear security in particular because nuclear security is considered to be more sensitive, more political subject so it's easier to adopt instruments on nuclear safety than it is on nuclear security but in the case of radioactive sources maybe because this was a non-binding instrument it was considered expedient to adopt rules in the same instrument that deal with both the safety and the security aspects. I suppose you are all familiar with the broad distinction between nuclear safety and nuclear security but we will come back to it in the next lecture where I will deal with nuclear security. Basically nuclear safety is about protecting the outside world from the potentially dangerous effects of nuclear activities whereas nuclear securities about protecting nuclear installations and nuclear material from outside interferences in particular by non-state actors such as terrorists or other individuals who tamper or interfere without authorization and therefore could then potentially create a safety problem if there is as a result of these activities for example a release of radiation. There is another code of conduct which relates to the safety of research reactors and again this is because a convention on nuclear safety although it has this very general title in fact only applies to the safety of nuclear power plants it doesn't even apply to the safety of all reactors so research reactors are not covered by the convention on nuclear safety. It was decided at the time these are not risky enough we don't want to have a binding treaty on the safety of research reactors and as a result in the end the safety of research reactors was dealt with through a non-binding code of conduct. Then we have the safety standards under its statute the agency is empowered to adopt safety standards which can deal with all aspects of nuclear safety so not only nuclear but also radioactive and all aspects of safety of nuclear safety are now regulated by a lot of safety standards which have been adopted by the agency through the time. Now the safety standards are non-binding for not even for IEA member states they're only binding on the agency and on agency operations but they're non-binding on IEA member states that the difference between code of conduct codes of conduct and safety standards I would say they're both non-binding but the safety standards are more detailed than the codes of the codes of conduct contain more general rules which normally a state can implement through national legislation whereas the safety standards go into the technical details that normally when implemented at national level are not implemented at the level of legislation because they're too detailed and normally legislative rules are more general but they implemented by governmental degrees or regulations which implement national laws so the safety standards are more technical and therefore are more detailed but they're also they're also non-binding. Now the common element of all of these instruments I think this was also to some extent covered by the introductory lecture that was given by by Patrick is that they oblige states oblige I mean if they're legally binding if they're not legally binding it's just a recommendation for states to establish a legislative and regulatory framework at the national level covering the various nuclear activities so this is a major point of these instruments there is either a legal obligation or a non-binding recommendation for the state to establish an adequate national legal framework both at the legislative level which is the level of more general rules and at the regulatory level which is the level of more detailed and more technical rules covering the various aspects of nuclear activities and this is where the distinction between binding and non-bindings as I told you becomes irrelevant because if a state abides with what is at the international level only a recommendation because for example the code of conduct on the safety and security or radioactive sources is not binding and therefore there is no obligation to adopt national rules conforming with the code of conduct but if a state does abide by this recommendation then at the national level we have a legal framework legislative or regulatory which is binding at the national level and it's no longer important whether or not at the international level the state was not obliged to adopt these rules if it chooses to do so based on a recommendation contained in a code of conduct or in an IEA safety standard then at the national level these rules become binding there is also a common element is the obligation or recommendation to establish a regulatory authority which has to be effectively independent as as Patric explained this originated in the US and the distinction between the authorities that are in charge with the promotion of nuclear energy and the authorities that are in charge of the regulation of nuclear energy there shouldn't be an interaction between these two otherwise there is no independence of a regulatory authority the establishment of a system of licensing inspection and enforcement so these are common elements which you will find in all of these instruments both binding and non-binding let's go quickly into the various instruments now starting with the one which is theoretically the most important because of its general title which is the Convention on Nuclear Safety although as I have pointed out despite this very general title the scope of application of this convention is comparatively narrow because it only covers the safety of nuclear installations but then nuclear installations are defined in the convention as basically meaning only civil nuclear power plants so it doesn't even cover research reactors as we've seen and these are dealt with in a non-binding instrument which is the code of conduct on the safety of research reactors now in the Convention on Nuclear Safety if you go through it there are a number of general provisions which embody general safety considerations and these relate to financial and human resources that have to be provided for example to the regulatory authority in order to enable it to effectively and independently exercise its functions human factors quality assurance assessment and verification of safety and radiation protection and there are also some rules on emergency preparedness then you will find a number of specific rules relating to the safety of nuclear installations as defined in the convention meaning in fact nuclear power plants only and these cover issues such as the siting of such installations the design and construction of such installations and the operation of such installations I don't want to go into the substance of these rules because we don't have time and also because I am a lawyer and these rules are really more for technical experts to explain for a lawyer what is more important in the convention of nuclear safety is the fact that this convention does not only have a list of obligations that state have to abide to in these areas which I have just outlined in the previous line but it also regulates a so-called review process so this is why this convention is called sometimes living convention or an incentive convention because it creates a system of peer review meetings first of all there is an obligation in the convention article 5 on all contracting parties to submit a report a national report which outlines what steps have been taken at the national level to comply with the rules of the convention on nuclear safety so there isn't only an obligation to comply with the rules but there is also an obligation to report in a written report that has to be submitted to the other contracting parties through the secretariat of the convention which is the IEA the IEA performs secretarial functions for the contracting parties of the of the CNS of the convention nuclear safety there is this obligation on the measures that have been taken to implement each of the obligation this in itself is already an incentive to comply because if you submit a report the others will read the report and it will be easier for them to decide whether or not that state has effectively implemented the provisions of the convention and if it hasn't in theory I say this is in very in theory because this hardly ever happens at the international level in theory another state could say but you have not complied with the convention which is a binding instrument you have violated the convention and then we may have an international dispute that may end up you know in arbitration but this never happens in practice it never happens in practice also because this peer review process means that apart from this obligation to report which is put upon the contracting parties the conventions provide for regular meetings of the contracting parties where these national reports are examined that is why this is called a peer review process because the peers the various states parties which are not hierarchically structured they're all the same level they review each other's national reports and these national reports are then discussed in various country groups which are established under under the convention there have been so far a number of these review meetings the latest one took place exactly this year in 2017 and there have also been two extraordinary meetings because the review meetings take place on a regular basis every three years basically but there can also be extraordinary meetings that are called for outside the normal review peer review cycle to discuss specific issues of concern for states for example the latest one in 2012 was called for because of the Chernobyl I'm sorry because of the Fukushima nuclear accident so there was a need for states to sit and see whether or not the rules of the convention in light of what had happened at Fukushima were still relevant and whether or not they needed to be amended or changed and the outcome of that discussion was for better or for worse that there was no need to amend the convention there was even at some point a proposal to amend the some specific articles for the convention but this proposal didn't meet with the necessary majority in order to be adopted so that the common consent was we don't need to amend the convention which is need to strengthen the peer review process that was the outcome of these discussions basically yes there was this diplomatic conference in 2015 to examine a proposal to amend the CNS which was not adopted instead this conference adopted a declaration on nuclear safety which is another non binding instrument it belongs to the category of declarations of principles which are adopted for example at the level of the United Nations very often I think the most famous of these is probably the Universal Declaration on Human Rights which was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its early days and which is also non binding it's a it's a declaration adopted at the high level either by an organ of an international organization like the General Assembly of the United Nations in the case of the human rights declaration or by a group of states such as the state's parties to CNS that participated in this in this conference which sets up a number of general principles that states should abide to in order to strengthen nuclear safety in light of kushima but it's again a non binding instrument let's turn now to the joint convention which was adopted a little bit later because the CNS was adopted in 1994 this one was adopted in 1997 and it resulted from the fact that the CNS as we see in despite its very general title has a very narrow scope of application it only applies to the safety of nuclear power plants so there was a need to tackle other aspects of nuclear safety that also related to the nuclear fuel cycle to the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle in particular to the safety of spent fuel management and on the safety of radioactive waste management this convention is called joint convention because originally there were two drafts one draft which was supposed to become two different conventions one was about the safety of spent fuel management one was about the safety of radioactive waste management then he was decided to merge the two drafts and adopt one text which became the joint convention that deals with both the safety of spent fuel management and the safety of radioactive waste management now the importance of this convention is that it doesn't only cover the matter safe management of spent fuel from the operation of civilian nuclear reactors which is related to again to nuclear power plants but not only because here we talk about nuclear reactors so it's also research reactors coming to play like in the convention nuclear safety when it comes to the safe management of spent fuel and also the radioactive waste the safe management of radioactive waste from civilian applications including decommissioning activities from from this point of view the convention as a broader scope of application than the cns because it covers the safety of spent fuel management from the operation of all civilian nuclear reactors not only nuclear power plants but also all other reactors such as for example research reactors and when it comes to the safety of radioactive waste it covers the safe management of radioactive waste from all civilian applications it doesn't apply to spend fuel held at reprocessing facilities as part of reprocessing activities it doesn't apply to naturally occurring nuclear material which is outside the nuclear fuel cycle but otherwise it applies to all radioactive waste from civil application this covers for example radioactive waste coming from sources radioactive sources which are completely aside the convention on nuclear safety and only governed as we've seen by a non-binding code of conduct but when it comes to the safe management of radioactive waste then we have a binding instrument and the parties to this convention have binding obligations regarding so it's a bit disappointing that if you look at the number of states parties through these conventions the convention nuclear safety at the moment has 82 parties all all states operating nuclear power plants except one which is Iran and a number of other states which are not operating nuclear power plants but have deemed it interesting to join mainly to participate in the peer review process and see what the others are doing for example neighboring states that are operating and nuclear power plants there may be an interest even for a non-nuclear for a state with no nuclear power plants to know what a neighboring state is doing if that neighboring state has a nuclear power plant so there are 82 at the moment whereas the joint convention only have 76 so a lower number of parties and the CNS so though potentially this convention is of interest to everyone because practically every state has waste coming from radioactive sources because we could be coming from a hospital for example where radioactive sources are used for health purposes and at some point these become radioactive waste and every state has them so it's a bit disappointing that there is a comparatively low number of states parties and of course the IEA secretary is working on this and we're trying to promote universal the DG has talked about the need to universalize both conventions but in particular the joint convention which is potentially of interest to everyone a few words on the early on the emergency preparedness and the systems convention the interesting thing about these conventions is that they were adopted these were the first treaties the first binding instruments adopted in the era of nuclear safety this was because of the Chernobyl accident which happened in 1986 which caused a great trauma let's say in the public at large but also in the nuclear community and in as a matter of a few months therefore it was incredible how little time it took after the accident in Chernobyl to adopt already in September 1986 the text of these two conventions which entered into force very soon after their adoption and have a very high number of contracting parties 121 for the early notification and 115 for the assistance convention so this was the aftermath of Chernobyl there was really a need for states to demonstrate to the international community that they were doing something and the first thing that they decided to do was to adopt these two conventions later only much later came the convention nuclear safety 1994 and the joint convention in 1997 the early notification convention is about notification of a nuclear accident so a state is obliged if it deems that an accident occurring on its territory has or potentially has transpondery effects to notify the accident to other contracting parties other directly or through the IEA the assistance convention as a broader scope of application because it's a framework whereby states can ask assistance from each other in case not only of a nuclear accident as defined in the early notification convention but also in case of a radiological emergency which is a very broad concept that may for example cover not only an accident which by definition is something that occurs by accident but also an incident for example that may occur because of a terrorist attack or or another malicious act that then creates a safety problem and then there is a need for assistance and also in case of an accident or incident involving a radioactive source also as this is also a radiological emergency it's not a nuclear accident but it's a radiological emergency and therefore assistance can be asked under these conventions then coming to the non-binding instruments the most important of these is the code of conduct on the safety and security of radioactive sources not only because as I've already mentioned it covers both safety and security which is quite an exception at the international level because states usually prefer to keep these two separate because security is most politically sensitive and states don't want to treat it in the same way as safety sometimes different people are involved at the national level with nuclear security than those that are normally involved in nuclear safety such as police forces or secret service or something like that so it's completely states prefer to keep it separate but at least in the case of radioactive sources it was decided to have one now the other important aspect of this code of conduct is that although it's soft law so it's not binding the general conference of the IEA decided at some point to establish a system of so-called political commitments which is based on the idea that states can write to the IEA to the DG actually making a political commitment whereby that state solemnly declares that it's prepared to abide by the rules of the code of conduct now a political commitment in theory is not the same as ratification of a treaty which makes the treaty binding for the state it remains a political commitment and the general conference expresses said at some point that it doesn't create binding obligations but in practice the difference is very slight because if a state solemnly and publicly declares before the other members of the IEA that it will abide by the code of conduct then there is an expectation a political expectation that this state will do so and if it doesn't do so the others will say oh but you've made a political commitment why are you not abiding and even the other interesting thing although this is a soft law instrument is that the IEA has created a mechanism of meetings whereby states not only those that have made political commitments but in general states can meet and discuss issues of common concern regarding the application of the code of conduct this is not exactly like a formalized peer review process like the one we have for the CNS or for the joint convention perhaps I forgot to mention that the joint convention also has a peer review process which is exactly the same similar as the one that is provided for under the CNS so we have a soft peer review process in a way under the code of conduct the other important code of conduct is the code of conduct on the safety or research reactors which is mainly important because the CNS as we've seen does not cover research reactors and therefore it was decided that there was a need for at least a non-binding instrument in the area of research reactors we have finally I'm going a bit a bit quick because running out of time the IEA safety standards I already mentioned that these are adopted by the IEA under its statute that they're more detailed and technical in nature than the codes of conduct or the treaties by the way they're not legally binding there is also a structure of the safety standards we have the safety fundamentals which contain general principles we have the safety requirements and the safety guides which are more at the implementation level among the IEA safety standards I think it's from the lawyer's point of view it is necessary to specifically mentioned the so-called transport regulations of the IEA why because these transport regulations of course like all IEA safety standards they relate to the safe transport of nuclear radioactive material like all safety standards they're not binding but they are referred to in a number of important multilateral treaties that have been adopted by states outside the framework of the IEA and these treaties make it an obligation for states to abide by the IEA transport regulation so in themselves these are not binding but because states have decided to make them binding through a number of multilateral treaties those states that have ratified these multilateral treaties will then be obliged by the treaties to adopt to abide by the transport regulation here you see I have only acronyms there are a number of treaties relating to the various modes of transport that make make it a legal obligation for states to abide by the transport regulation so for states that have ratified any of these treaties relating to sea transport air transport road transport rail transport answer one then there is an obligation to abide by the transport regulation and I think this concludes my presentation and thank you very much for your attention