원자력시설에 대한 테러 및 중대사고 리스크의 사전관리제도에 관한 연구 ― 미국의 환경영향평가제도를 중심으로 ―

초록

Since the Fukushima accident in March 2011, the regulatory interests in severe accidents in nuclear facilities have been greatly increased. Severe accidents are those in which substantial damage is done to the reactor core beyond the design basis. These can occur from causes such as natural disasters including earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, but also artificial events, namely, aircraft crashes, explosions, cyber attacks and terrorism. Korea, which has recently adopted various legal tools to manage severe accidents, is in need to search for better tools to manage the risks of severe accident and terrorism in nuclear facilities. However, there is an interesting phenomenon at home and abroad in this regard: this search goes beyond the discussions of improving and strengthening safety and security regulations within the framework of the nuclear law and has formed a discourse of “environmental risk” under the environmental law. Given this background, this article examined the suitability of the environmental impact assessment(EIA) as an ex ante management tool for the risks of terrorism and severe accident in nuclear facilities under the U.S. law. Specifically, the following four questions were addressed by reviewing several U.S. case laws on the U.S. Atomic Energy Act of 1954(AEA), the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969(NEPA) and the Environmental Impact Statements(EIS). First, if the safety and physical protection regulations are adequately implemented on nuclear facilities under the AEA, would the NEPA’s review be unnecessary? Secondly, is the EIS meaningful as an ex ante management tool for the risks of terrorism or severe accidents? Third, would the consideration of severe accidents in the EIS make that of terrorism, which is only one of many causes of severe accident, unnecessary? And finally, if the EIS can be justified as a meaningful tool, what more are necessary to make it more useful? Accordingly, this article is organized as follows. In Part II, it briefly described overviews of the AEA and the NEPA, and discussed how US courts have interpreted the NEPA's causality requirement to determine effects that should or should not be considered in the EIS. In Parts III and IV, it examined how courts have dealt with the issues of considering the severe accident and terrorism under the NEPA, respectively. Finally in Part V, it reviewed the above-mentioned four issues and proposed agenda for the subsequent study.

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