Article ID: CBB957001662

From lobbyists to backstage diplomats: How insurers in the field of third party liability shaped nuclear diplomacy (2021)

unapi

Alexandros-Andreas Kyrtsis (Author)
Rentetzi, Maria (Author)


History and Technology
Volume: 37
Issue: 1
Pages: 25-43


Publication Date: 2021
Edition Details: Special Issue: Nuclear Diplomacies
Language: English

Third party liability insurance in the event of nuclear accidents emerged as a pressing issue in the 1950s, triggered to a great extent by the activities of international organizations and major nuclear accidents. By the mid-1960s a tight international network of negotiators comprising insurers, lawyers, scientists, engineers, businessmen, and government officials made its appearance along with nuclear insurance pools. Experts, functionaries, diplomats and politicians with often diverging views and expertise were involved in negotiations over the newly emerging legal and regulatory problems related to radiation protection and third party liability in the event of severe accidents. This paper argues that insurers transformed their identities from lobbyists to backstage nuclear diplomats, making their role explicitly political and profoundly diplomatic in an emerging international nuclear order. Within this novel multilayered context of negotiations the nuclear insurance pools developed a unique form of nuclear diplomacy, altering both terms of ‘nuclear’ and ‘diplomacy’.

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Associated with

Article Kenji Ito; Maria Rentetzi (2021) The co-production of nuclear science and diplomacy: Towards a transnational understanding of nuclear things. History and Technology (pp. 4-20). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB957001662/

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Authors & Contributors
Rentetzi, Maria
Kenji Ito
Elisabeth Roehrlich
Mateos, Gisela
Suárez-Díaz, Edna
Hamblin, Jacob Darwin
Concepts
Nuclear power; atomic energy
Cold War
Science and politics
Foreign relations; diplomacy
Technical assistance
International cooperation
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
21st century
Places
United States
South Africa
Spain
Pakistan
Latin America
Japan
Institutions
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
United Nations
CENTO Nuclear Institute
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
United States. Atomic Energy Commission
Westinghouse Electric Corporation
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