I have a friend who’s currently doing her Master’s degree in Corporate Law. She’s on the initial levels of attempting to come up with a thesis question that would look at the nuclear industry from a corporate law perspective. Can you guys help or share thoughts on angles through which she start to form the question? She’s sort of bound with these two topics, and it’s a bit hard to find a proper way to link them and create a thesis question that would yield rich results worthy of a master’s thesis.
This is going to be more a matter of opinion than fact, so let’s move it to our opinion forum.
Please note that we have a “no homework” rule around here. It’s ok for people to give advice and maybe kick around some ideas for you, but don’t ask people to do your work for you. Since you seem to be asking for ideas and opinions anyway, you seem to be on the safe side of the rule, so this is mostly just a reminder to all of where the line is so we don’t go over it while answering the question.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
Maybe she could examine the exceptions? For example, look at where the nuclear industry has been granted exemptions from the normal liabilities that other industries may face. Contrast that with responsibilities and liabilities that have been imposed specifically on the nuclear industry or responsibilities and liabilities that only the nuclear industry could face.
She could discuss the fact that after a nuclear reactor melts down and makes an entire city uninhabitable, it is futile to fine or sue the owner since they will probably be broke and couldn’t possibly have enough money to repair the damages and discuss how society and the law would deal with that.
Thanks for your thoughts. It’s a bit of stretch to identify fields of research that puts the nuclear industry in the corporate market - especially that there’s not many stakeholders usually involved in the sales or procurement of goods in this field aside from government agencies.
That’s an interesting approach. The problem with that is that where I live (the UAE), nuclear energy is relatively young and incredibly fresh, so there’s yet an industry to be established here that would depend on nuclear sources for power generation - though that is the clear national intention of harvesting such power and it is where the country is heading towards. I’m now questioning the feasibility of doing a case study on the US, and attempting to apply that on the UAE. Too many variables to consider but it could make for an interesting comparative study.
Has the UAE passed any laws that specifically address the issue of civil liability for a nuclear accident?
For example, in Canada the federal Parliament has enacted a special regime of civil liabilty for a nuclear accident, overriding provincial laws which normally govern civil liability:
