122
S. Nakanwagi
mitigation of climate change. As such, the region can meet its sustainable development targets under Goals 7 and 13. This is because nuclear
is a more reliable and cleaner form of energy compared to traditional
energy sources. However, the associated risks to human health, society
and environment and the disastrous magnitude of the accidents, for
instance, Chernobyl and Daiichi make many people opposed to the
development of the industry. These perils necessitate the setting up of a
robust regulatory regime on global, regional and national scales to establish common legal and regulatory standards.
34 In so doing, a generally
accepted minimum level of social and environmental protection is set.
35
4.3 The International Legal Order
on Nuclear Energy
There are currently four broad areas where global and regional regulation
of nuclear energy is focused, and these include liability and compensation
for nuclear damage, environmental protection, nuclear safety and emergency response, and Non-proliferation and nuclear security. International and regional institutions on nuclear use include the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
36 ; International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP)
37 ; Euratom Treaty
38 ; the OECD Nuclear
Energy Agency; and the Inter-American Nuclear Energy Commission
(IANEC).
34 Ibid., at p. 493.
35 Ibid.
36 The IAEA is a creation of the Statute of the IAEA which was approved on October 23,
1956, by the Conference on the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
37 Created in 1928, the ICRP is a non-governmental organisation responsible for assessing the
knowledge of States on the effects of radiation and advising on the most appropriate radiological
protection rules to adopt.
38 See Article 2 of the 1957 Eurotam Treaty.