§ Lord Kennetasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will provide, with details, a comparative list of those energy generation activities, and any associated waste disposal, in the course of which the liability of the operator, carrier, ship owner, is limited, and indicate in respect of which of them they have undertaken to indemnify the operator, and what, in pounds sterling, this de facto subsidy, in the form of insurance premiums not required, amounts to in each case.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy (The Earl of Avon)Under the Nuclear Installations Act 1965 the third party liability of nuclear site licensees is limited to £20 million per incident, or in the case of certain small installations £5 million. Liability for nuclear material in transit is in most cases channelled to the dispatching or receiving nuclear site licensee. The Act provides that claims in excess of these amounts should be made to the Secretary of State and there is provision in the Brussels Convention supplementary to the Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy for the other parties to the Brussels Convention to contribute to the costs, within certain limits.
In most cases nuclear site licensees insure commercially against their liabilities. However, in accordance with the provisions of the Atomic Energy Act 1971 the AEA indemnify BNFL in respect of certain risks for their Sellafield and Capenhurst sites and against certain of their liabilities in respect of nuclear material in transit. Details of these indemni-ties are set out in Cmnd. Paper 9132 concerning indemnities by the UKAEA to British Nuclear Fuels. The AEA charge a premium for the cover provided. The liability of tanker owners for oil pollution is 467WA limited to £96 per tonne of the ship concerned up to a maximum of approximately £10 million. However, the International Oil Pollution Compensation Fund, which is funded by oil importers, provides for a total of up to £32.3 million.