Abstract/Summary

Considering the importance of protecting people and the environment against the dangers arising from ionising radiation from nuclear installations, this research project focuses on the Convention on Nuclear Safety applicable to nuclear power plants, adopted in 1994 and entered into force in 1996. The research question explores the Convention’s positioning between stability and reform, with the aid of a new model whose application can be extended to other treaties. To support the answer to the research question, the thesis proposes a new theoretical approach associated with the legal analysis, which regards the Convention as a ‘formal institution’ and applies a set of historical institutionalist concepts as an explanatory device for its evolution. The research project studies the Convention’s formation, and its development over 25 years since its entry into force (1996 - 2021), over a three-phase chronology. It finds that the Treaty’s institutional architecture, designed in the aftermath of the 1986 first major nuclear accident at Chernobyl (an exogenous shock classified at the highest severity level), was the root cause for the Convention’s enduring path dependence. The Treaty has remained unaffected, even when a reform could have occurred, notably in the aftermath of the 2011 second major nuclear accident in history at Fukushima (ranked at the highest severity level). Instead of undergoing a reform of the core Treaty (which would have entailed important efforts in terms of time, costs, and procedures), new developments arising from significant exogenous nuclear events and from the Convention’s implementation monitoring have been gradually absorbed into auxiliary legal instruments and processes (procedural arrangements and peer-review process, declaration, standards). These are referred to in the thesis as ‘institutional mechanisms’ supporting the Convention’s implementation. The research proposes the new concept of the ‘institutional system of the Convention’, composed of the formal institution and the institutional mechanisms. It finds that the Convention’s stability was ensured through the coexistence of the path dependence of the Treaty as a formal institution with the compensatory dynamic actualisations of the institutional mechanisms. This formula has also ensured the institutional system’s adaptability. Based on the Convention’s case study, the thesis proposes, as a novelty, a hybrid legal – historical institutionalist model that can be used to study the evolution of other international treaties in different areas, also supporting future decisions on their development. Thereby, the thesis contributes to the international nuclear law literature and the historical institutionalism literature.