Cherrnobyl

[Segilla]

Was compensation demanded from the USSR for damage caused here, to farming in N Wales for example?

Or was it not legally possible or unrealistic?

[Octavius]

At least �13m has been paid out in compensation to British farmers, not from the USSR though. I also understand that the farmers need to obtain a licence every time they want to move their sheep and call in Government inspectors to scan each animal before it can be sold. They are paid �1.30 compensation for each sheep scanned, the same as in 1986 - but again this is from our own Govmt.

baaa

[noxlumos]

Bit of Nuclear fallout would improve North Wales I should have thought, or has no-one ever been to Rhyl?:)

[squiperly]

Bearing in mind that the USSR couldn't afford to pay many of its own employees for several years and that the general population has a relatively low standard of living, I wouldn't have thought that there would have been any money to pay compensation claims. Also, the greatest damage from the explosion was in the Ukraine itself, so it would have been rather crass to claim compensation from a nation which was already suffering. Many of the children from that area are still suffering the effects today, from which thankfully we were lucky enough to be spared.

[Segilla]

I appreciate the pracftical considerations of poverty and so on, but legally, Governments are usually unconcerned with 'life and hard times'. They want satisfaction - even if it's is impossible in practise, at least initially.

Take the Corfu Channel incident, where the British government held out for compensation from a dead-beat country for many years, (settling, if memory serves) by deducting a smaller amount from Albania's gold which we held, before it was given back, many years after the submarine's sinking.