ABSTRACT
The international regulation of nuclear risks consists of both hard law instruments and soft law standards designed to achieve denuclearization, prohibition of nuclear weapons testing, ensuring nuclear safety, peaceful use of nuclear energy and international cooperation in trans-boundary movement of nuclear wastes, and establishing a nuclear liability regime for environmental pollution or harm. In particular, multilateral treaties regulating nuclear energy also deal with denuclearization, non-proliferation, nuclear safety and security, third-party liability, management of radioactive waste, and emergency preparedness. The earlier nuclear treaties mainly focused on ensuring of use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, denuclearization and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. A significant number of recent nuclear treaties aim at nuclear disarmament and denuclearization at regional level. While denuclearization aims at elimination of the military infrastructure and materials necessary for nuclear weapons production, non-proliferation refers to facilitating the peaceful use of nuclear technologies and abstention from nuclear weapons by non-nuclear weapon states. However, treaties on nuclear disarmament are not new phenomena as the USA and Russia had concluded many bilateral agreements on restrictions and reductions and deployment of nuclear weapons. While the risk of nuclear weapon proliferation should not be used as an argument in favour of stopping the use of nuclear energy for satisfying human needs, international agreement on regulations and safeguards needs to be in place to prevent such risks. 1
