Explanatory note

Certain types of nuclear sites are subject to the nuclear third party liability (“NTPL”) regime established by the Nuclear Installations Act 1965 (“the Act”). In the event of a nuclear incident, the NTPL regime channels liability exclusively and strictly to the operator of the site responsible for the incident, however that liability is capped. The NTPL regime also requires operators of sites to have Secretary of State approved financial security arrangements in place to ensure they can meet any claims up to that cap. The Act implements the United Kingdom’s NTPL obligations under the 1960 Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy (the Paris Convention).

The 2004 Protocol to Amend the Convention on Nuclear Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy (“the Protocol”) came into force on 1st January 2022, adding sites on which installations for the disposal of nuclear matter (“relevant disposal sites”) operate to the types of nuclear site subject to the NTPL regime. The changes were implemented domestically by the Nuclear Installations (Liability for Damage) Order 2016, which came into force on the same day.

However, between the Protocol being agreed and entering into force, the States Parties to the Paris Convention agreed a route for certain relevant disposal sites to be exempt from the NTPL regime when they adopted the 2016 Decision and Recommendation Concerning the Application of the Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy to Nuclear Installations for the Disposal of Certain Types of Low-level Radioactive Waste.

Section 7C of the Act and these Regulations implement the above Decision and Recommendation. Section 7C(1)(a)(i) and (ii) set out two of the necessary conditions (the permit condition and the site history condition) and regulation 2 of these Regulations prescribes two additional conditions (the dose condition and the criticality condition). A site which satisfies all four conditions is eligible to be granted excluded disposal site status, meaning it is no longer a relevant disposal site and is therefore exempt from the NTPL regime.

Regulation 3 amends the Nuclear Installations (Excepted Matter) Regulations 2017 (S.I. 2017/920) so that nuclear matter disposed of in an installation on an excluded disposal site is “excepted matter” for the purposes of the Act. This ensures that, when a site is exempted from the NTPL regime, responsibility does not revert to the operator of the site that the nuclear matter originated from.

A full impact assessment has not been produced for this instrument as no, or no significant, impact on the private, voluntary or public sector is foreseen.