A Comparative Study of the Competent Court and Applicable Law in Civil Liability Caused By Nuclear incidents under International Conventions, Japanese and Iranian Laws

The expansion of nuclear activities has been accompanied with increased nuclear transboundary risks. One of the legal issues is the determination of the competent court and law. Civil nuclear conventions consider a single competent forum to deal with all actions, that is the court of the country within the territory of which the nuclear incident occurred or the courts of Installation State. The applicable law is to be the provisions of the conventions or national legislation of the competent court . Even though Japan is not a party to any of the international nuclear liability conventions, it has a solid national third party liability legislation on nuclear responsibility according to which, the court of the country where the incident took place has the jurisdiction, and the applicable law is usually the law of the place where the damage has occurred. Since Iran it is not a member of civil nuclear liability conventions and it does not have any relevant domestic law in this field, it has used general rules such as defendant’s domicile to determine the competence court and the applicable law, which in many cases will be ineffective. Therefore, the specific legislation or at least membership of the relevant conventions is necessary.