Insure the volume? 169
The historical premise of our analysis is the tangible lack of insurable
relationships in the Soviet Union at the time of the disaster in 1986. Today,
operators of nuclear power plants are liable for any damage caused by them,
regardless of fault. This was not the case in 1986. The Soviet Union, moreover, was not a signatory of the conventions that addressed international
liability issues: The Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field
of Nuclear Energy of 1960, the Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for
Nuclear Damage of 1963, and the Brussels Supplementary Convention of
1963 (IAEA 2020). Thus, aside from the estimated 300,000 evacuees that
had lived within what became the parameters of the CEZ (who were relocated and partly compensated by the state), compensation was difficult to
claim for people affected by the disaster in the acute aftermath and the ensuing years. People were required to prove the link between radiation-related
exposure and the health impairments they were experiencing. This continues to pose a major challenge for many people affected by the Chornobyl
disaster. The effects of radiation are often subtle, manifesting stochastically,
long after the exposure event. The intergenerational effects of exposure are
also a contentious issue. The lack of quality health care in the economically
and politically unstable post-Soviet states compounded these issues by making it difficult, especially for poor people, to receive compensation. Petryna
(2016) outlines how this led to a new form of ‘biological citizenship’ in which
Chornobyl suffers mobilised assaults on their health to stake claims for biomedical resources, social equity, and human rights. As Davies (2015, p. 230)
writes, people felt abandoned or exposed twice, ‘once to the hidden threat of
radiation, and once more to a state that has abandoned them.’
There have been significant improvements to national laws and international conventions since then, first in response to the Chornobyl disaster,
and subsequently after the Fukushima disaster in 2011 (World Nuclear
Association 2018). However, in 1986, people in the Soviet Union were at
the mercy of political will for any form of compensation, while the consequences felt overseas fell back on national principles of common or civil law
as well as political will (Schwartz 2006). The strict liability of the nuclear
operator, which is one of the key principles of most conventions and laws
regarding nuclear third-party liability today, is significant because an insurance claimant does not have to prove how an accident occurred (i.e. prove
fault) (World Nuclear Association 2018). However, even with the extension
of the prescription/extinction period of insurable damage to 30 years postevent in the revised international conventions, many impairments to the
environment or personal health are not covered retroactively because of the
difficulty of proving causality years or decades after a disaster (Schwartz
2006). Complicating matters further in the context of wildfires in the CEZ,
is the lack of an international legal agreement on the vertical extent of sovereign airspace (Billé 2017).
In what follows, we begin with a description of our theoretical framework
before introducing our case study. We then build on the growing body of
The historical premise of our analysis is the tangible lack of insurable
relationships in the Soviet Union at the time of the disaster in 1986. Today,
operators of nuclear power plants are liable for any damage caused by them,
regardless of fault. This was not the case in 1986. The Soviet Union, moreover, was not a signatory of the conventions that addressed international
liability issues: The Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field
of Nuclear Energy of 1960, the Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for
Nuclear Damage of 1963, and the Brussels Supplementary Convention of
1963 (IAEA 2020). Thus, aside from the estimated 300,000 evacuees that
had lived within what became the parameters of the CEZ (who were relocated and partly compensated by the state), compensation was difficult to
claim for people affected by the disaster in the acute aftermath and the ensuing years. People were required to prove the link between radiation-related
exposure and the health impairments they were experiencing. This continues to pose a major challenge for many people affected by the Chornobyl
disaster. The effects of radiation are often subtle, manifesting stochastically,
long after the exposure event. The intergenerational effects of exposure are
also a contentious issue. The lack of quality health care in the economically
and politically unstable post-Soviet states compounded these issues by making it difficult, especially for poor people, to receive compensation. Petryna
(2016) outlines how this led to a new form of ‘biological citizenship’ in which
Chornobyl suffers mobilised assaults on their health to stake claims for biomedical resources, social equity, and human rights. As Davies (2015, p. 230)
writes, people felt abandoned or exposed twice, ‘once to the hidden threat of
radiation, and once more to a state that has abandoned them.’
There have been significant improvements to national laws and international conventions since then, first in response to the Chornobyl disaster,
and subsequently after the Fukushima disaster in 2011 (World Nuclear
Association 2018). However, in 1986, people in the Soviet Union were at
the mercy of political will for any form of compensation, while the consequences felt overseas fell back on national principles of common or civil law
as well as political will (Schwartz 2006). The strict liability of the nuclear
operator, which is one of the key principles of most conventions and laws
regarding nuclear third-party liability today, is significant because an insurance claimant does not have to prove how an accident occurred (i.e. prove
fault) (World Nuclear Association 2018). However, even with the extension
of the prescription/extinction period of insurable damage to 30 years postevent in the revised international conventions, many impairments to the
environment or personal health are not covered retroactively because of the
difficulty of proving causality years or decades after a disaster (Schwartz
2006). Complicating matters further in the context of wildfires in the CEZ,
is the lack of an international legal agreement on the vertical extent of sovereign airspace (Billé 2017).
In what follows, we begin with a description of our theoretical framework
before introducing our case study. We then build on the growing body of