Research On Legal Protection Of Public’s Right To Know About Nuclear Safety In China

Under general shortage of non-renewable energy and large-scale power supply of renewable energy all over the world,nuclear energy,as a kind of clean and efficient energy,accounts for a bigger proportion in energy utilization in various countries.Although China’s civil nuclear industry had not developed until 1980 s,now China has independent research and development capability in this field,and nuclear safety is absolutely guaranteed.Even though,civil nuclear facilities,especially nuclear power plants,usually cause public phobia and opposition.This is due to the awaken of the internal awareness of civil rights,and externally the insufficient protection of the public’s right to know about nuclear safety.This paper takes the public’s right to know about nuclear safety as the research stress,and looks for ways to improve the public’s right to know about nuclear safety in legislation,administration and judicial system.This paper first decomposes the concept of the public right to know about nuclear safety and forms a basic definition,and then analyzes the rights’ content,subjects and legal nature to establish a theoretical context.Then the laws and regulations related to the public’s right to know about nuclear safety in China and the current situation of such law implementation have been analyzed.Combined with two specific cases,the shortcomings in the protection of the public’s right to know about nuclear safety in China have been found,which are reflected in three aspects: the protection period of the right to know about nuclear safety is not long enough in existing legislation;the depth of public participation is not sufficient in practice;and the scope of judicial protection is too narrow.The practice of the United States,France and Japan in protecting the public’s right to know about nuclear safety have been learned.Finally,this paper puts forward some suggestions to improve the legal protection for the public’s right to know about nuclear safety in China.The law should clearly stipulate the public’s right to know about nuclear safety at the site selection stage and establish the interest compensation mechanism of the people around nuclear facilities.At the same time,the obligations of nuclear facilities operators should be clearly defined,and they must bear due social responsibilities in such incidents.Moreover,it is necessary to improve the information disclosure and expand the scope of information disclosure,and there should be two-way communication with the public and nuclear safety culture and nuclear science popularization should be implemented.And a new public participation model to enable the public to achieve substantial participation and the decision-making rights should be developed.What’s more,if the public’s right to know about nuclear safety is not guaranteed,they should have the rights to sue to the courts based on information disclosure legislation,so as to safeguard their rights and interests.