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Nuclear Non Proliferation in International Law Volume
III Legal Aspects of the Use of Nuclear Energy for
Peaceful Purposes 1st Edition Jonathan L. Black-Branch
Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Jonathan L. Black-Branch, Dieter Fleck (eds.)
ISBN(s): 9789462651388, 9462651388
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 4.87 MB
Year: 2016
Language: english
Nuclear Non-
Proliferation in
International Law
Volume III
Legal Aspects of the Use of Nuclear
Energy for Peaceful Purposes

Jonathan L. Black-Branch
Dieter Fleck Editors
Nuclear Non-Proliferation in International
Law—Volume III
Jonathan L. Black-Branch · Dieter Fleck
Editors

Nuclear Non-Proliferation
in International
Law—Volume III
Legal Aspects of the Use of Nuclear Energy
for Peaceful Purposes

13
Editors
Jonathan L. Black-Branch Dieter Fleck
Faculty of Law Cologne
University of Manitoba Germany
Winnipeg, MB
Canada

ISBN 978-94-6265-137-1 ISBN 978-94-6265-138-8 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-94-6265-138-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016945948

Published by t.m.c. asser press, The Hague, The Netherlands www.asserpress.nl

Produced and distributed for t.m.c. asser press by Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

© t.m.c. asser press and the authors 2016

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Preface

Nuclear non-proliferation remains firmly in the focus of public debate, nationally,

regionally and on a global level. While some issues are highly disputed and the
role of law may be seen as ineffective and weak in relation to the questions to be
solved, international law continues to play a distinct role and makes a relevant
contribution in providing an enforceable regulatory framework for securing safety
and security in this important area. Treaty law and evolving customary principles
and rules may be used to balance diverging interests and protect the needs of peo-
ples and individuals that would otherwise remain subject to arbitrary authority and
decision-making. The important task of securing non-proliferation of nuclear
weapons, to ensure the safety and security of peaceful uses of nuclear energy and
to achieve nuclear disarmament under strict and effective international control,
calls for the interpretation and application of international legal rules in their rele-
vant context, a task that this book series endeavours to facilitate. Volume I,1 which
started with an exposé of relevant legal issues and international concerns,
addressed a variety of critical questions that require strict and full application of
rules stemming from more than one field of international law. Volume II2 was ded-
icated to an in-depth review of controversial aspects of verification and compli-
ance. It assisted to further develop international consensus on critical issues of law
application that remains essential, both from a theoretical perspective and from the
practices of States and international organizations. The positive reception of both
Volumes underlines the need for continued efforts in this field, in order to explore
such issues further.
The present Volume focuses on Legal Aspects of the Use of Nuclear Energy for
Peaceful Purposes. The main body of contributions presented are the results of a
research conference held in Cologne from 19 to 20 November 2015. This follows

1
Black-Branch J and Fleck D (Eds), Nuclear Non-Proliferation in International Law, Vol I with
Preface by Mohamed ElBaradei. Springer/Asser Press, 2014.
2
Black-Branch J and Fleck D (Eds), Nuclear Non-Proliferation in International Law, Vol II
Verification and Compliance. Springer/Asser Press, 2015.

v
vi Preface

in the tradition of gathering relevant experts to discuss areas pertinent to nuclear

weapons, non-proliferation and contemporary international law through the
Nuclear Round Table series, which have already lead to two comprehensive
Reports, presented at the last two conferences of the International Law Association
(Washington 20143 and Johannesburg 20164). The Cologne conference provided
an excellent forum for exchange of expertise and in-depth discussion of controver-
sial issues of nuclear safety and security. It also offered an opportunity for a com-
prehensive legal evaluation of the 2015 Nuclear Accord with Iran and its
implementation, a vital topic that is also reflected in this Volume.
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Prof. Kerstin Odendahl,
Executive Director of the Walther Schücking Institute of International Law
at the University of Kiel, for co-organizing this event in conjunction with the
ILA Committee on Nuclear Weapons, Non-Proliferation and Contemporary
International Law and the Nuclear Round Table series. We are particularly
indebted to the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for again supporting the event, and in
particular to Dr. Thomas Suermann and his team for hosting our conference
in a highly professional and forthcoming manner that has greatly supported our
activities.
Special acknowledgement is again due to our peer reviewers who have offered
their critical advice, encouragement and invaluable suggestions. As all co-authors
appreciated the double anonymous review process, we may express our sincere
gratitude on behalf of all of them.
TMC Asser Press/Springer has helped to secure the publication of this book
series in a very diligent and effective manner. We would like to thank Philip van
Tongeren, Frank Bakker and their team for their interest, outstanding diligence and
encouragement.

Oxford, UK Jonathan L. Black-Branch

Cologne, Germany Dieter Fleck
April 2016

3
Legal Aspects of Nuclear Disarmament, http://www.ila-hq.org/en/committees/index.cfm/cid/1025.
4
Legal Issues of Verification of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Obligations, http://www.ila-hq.org/en/
committees/index.cfm/cid/1025.
Contents

1 Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy and Its Interrelationship

with Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Jonathan L. Black-Branch and Dieter Fleck
2 Between Prosperity and Destruction: A Modern Interpretation
of the Right to Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy in Light
of the Protection of Human Rights and Future Generations . . . . . . . 21
Daniel Rietiker
3 Ensuring Peaceful Use via International Licensing
of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Seth Hoedl
4 Perspectives on a Treaty Prohibiting the Production
and Stockpiling of Weapon-Usable Nuclear Material. . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Tariq Rauf and Usman Iqbal Jadoon
5 Mitigating the Nuclear ‘Dual-Use Dilemma’: Suggestions
for the Enhancement of the Culture of Responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Ilaria Anna Colussi
6 Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy Under EURATOM Law. . . . . . . . . 171
Jürgen Grunwald
7 Some Aspects of the Effectiveness of the International
Regulatory Framework to Ensure Nuclear Safety. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Anguel Anastassov
8 A Framework for the Secure Development of Nuclear
Energy: Obligations, Challenges and Possible Solutions. . . . . . . . . . . 247
Sonia Drobysz
9 Storage and Disposal of Radioactive Waste: The Search
for a Global Solution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Kerstin Odendahl

vii
viii Contents

10 The Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy and the Protection

of the Environment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Michael Bothe
11 Nuclear Off-site Emergency Preparedness and Response:
Some International Legal Aspects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
Günther Handl
12 Nuclear Accidents: Models for Reparation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
Norbert Pelzer
13 Legal Aspects of the Nuclear Accord with Iran
and Its Implementation: International Law Analysis
of Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
Dirk Roland Haupt
14 The Iranian Nuclear Agreement: A Scientifically Reliable,
Transactional and Verifiable Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. . . . 471
Maurizio Martellini and Massimo Zucchetti
15 Due Diligence as a Legal Concept to Ensure Security
and Safety of Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy as well
as Non-proliferation and Disarmament Obligations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
Jonathan Black-Branch
16 The Right to Develop Research, Production and Use
of Nuclear Energy for Peaceful Purposes: Shortcomings
and Loopholes in Legal Regulation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525
Dieter Fleck
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553
Abbreviations

ABACC Brazilian–Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control

of Nuclear Materials
AEOI Atomic Energy Organization of Iran
AFCONE African Commission on Nuclear Energy
ALARA ‘as low as reasonably achievable’
AMP Ageing management programme
AP Additional Protocol
ARM Advance Reference Material
ARSIWA Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally
Wrongful Acts (2001)
BOT Breakout time
BSC Brussels Supplementary Convention (31 January 1963)
CANDU CANadian Deuterium Uranium reactors
CBRN Chemical Biological Radiological and Nuclear Risk Mitigation
CD Conference on Disarmament
CERCLA United States Comprehensive Environmental Response,
Compensation, and Liability Act of 11 December 1980
CERN Conseil européen pour la recherche nucléaire
CFSP Common Foreign and Security Policy (EU)
CMC Convention Relating to Civil Liability in the Field of Maritime
Carriage of Nuclear Material (17 December 1971)
CNS Convention on Nuclear Security (20 September 1994)
CoCom Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls
CPPNM Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material
(26 October 1979)
CSA Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement
CSC Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage
(29 September 1997)
CSDP Common Security and Defence Policy (EU)
CSS Commission on Safety Standards

ix
x Abbreviations

CTBT Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (24 September 1996)

DEA Drug Enforcement Administration (US)
DiD Defence in depth
DoE Department of Energy
DPRK Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
DRM Dispute resolution mechanism
DS Design safety
DSARS Design and Safety Assessment Review Service
EAEC European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM)
ECHR European Convention on Human Rights
ECSC European Coal and Steel Community
ECtHR European Court on Human Rights
EEC European Economic Community
ENDC Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament
ENR Uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing
ENSREG European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group
EPR Nuclear off-site emergency preparedness and response
EPReSC Committee on Emergency Preparedness and Response Standards
EU European Union
EURATOM European Atomic Energy Community
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
FMCT Fissile material cut-off treaty
FMT Fissile material treaty
FORO Ibero-American Forum of Radiological and Nuclear Regulatory
Agencies
GGE Group of Governmental Experts
GNNPV Global nuclear non-proliferation verification
GRS Generic Reactor Safety
HEU Highly enriched uranium
IACHR Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
IACRNE Inter-Agency Committee on Radiological and Nuclear
Emergencies
IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency
ICCPR International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(19 December 1966)
ICJ International Court of Justice
ICNS Draft International Convention on Nuclear Security
ICRP International Commission on Radiological Protection
ICSANT International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear
Terrorism (13 April 2005)
ILA International Law Association
ILC International Law Commission
ILM International Legal Materials
INES International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale
INFCE International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation
Abbreviations xi

INFCIRC Information Circulars, IAEA

INLA International Nuclear Licensing Agency
INLEX International Expert Group on Nuclear Liability
INRA International Nuclear Regulators Association
INSAG International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group
INSARR Integrated Safety Assessment of Research Reactors
IPFM International Panel on Fissile Materials
IPPNW International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
IPSART International Probabilistic Safety Assessment Review Team
IRENA International Renewable Energy Agency
IRRS Integrated Regulatory Review Service
ITDB Illicit Trafficking Database System
ITER International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor
JCPOA Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
JP Joint Protocol Relating to the Application of the Vienna
Convention and the Paris Convention (21 September 1988)
JPLAN Joint Radiation Emergencies Management Plan
JPOA Joint Plan of Action
LEU Low-enriched uranium
LTO Long-term operation
MTCR Missile Technology Control Regime
NAM Non-Aligned Movement
NNWS Non-nuclear weapon States
NPP Nuclear power plant
NPT Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1 July 1968)
NSaC Nuclear Safety Center
NSaCoE Nuclear Safety Center of Excellence
NSG Nuclear Suppliers Group
NSGEG Nuclear Security Governance Experts Group
NSS Nuclear Security Series (IAEA)
NuPoC Nuclear Power Plant and Reactor Exporters’ Principles of Conduct
NUSS Nuclear Safety Standards
NUSSC Committee on Nuclear Safety Standards
NWFZ Nuclear weapon-free zone
NWS Nuclear weapon States
OECD/NEA Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
Nuclear Energy Agency
OEEC Organization for European Economic Co-Operation
OFAC Office of Foreign Assets Control
OP Operative paragraph
OPANAL Organismo para la Proscripción de las Armas Nucleares
en la América Latina y el Caribe
OSART Operational Safety Review Team
PLiM Plant life management
PMD Possible Military Dimensions
xii Abbreviations

PP Preambular paragraph
PRA Probabilistic Risk Assessment
PROSPER Peer Review of Operational Safety Performance
Experience Review
PSA Probabilistic Safety Assessment
PSI Proliferation Security Initiative
PUI Peaceful Uses Initiative (IAEA)
PWG Procurement Working Group
R&D Research & Development
RADWASS Radioactive Waste Safety Standards
RAMP Review of Accident Management Programmes
RASSC Committee on Radiation Safety Standards
RevCon Review Conference
ROpER Regulator Operating Experience Review
SALTO Safety Aspects of Long-Term Operation of Water Moderated
Reactors
SARIS Self-Assessment of Regulatory Infrastructure for Safety
SC Security Council
SDGs Sustainable Development Goals
SDN List Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List
SDR Special Drawing Rights as defined by the International Monetary
Fund (IMF)
SEDO Safety Evaluation of Fuel Cycle Facilities during Operation
SER Safeguards Evaluation Report
SFAIRP ‘so far as is reasonably practicable’
SLC State-Level Concept
SSRS Site and Seismic Safety Review
SUA Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the
Safety of Maritime Navigation (2005)
SUA Prot Protocol for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety
of Fixed Platforms Located on the Continental Shelf (2005)
SWU Separative Work Units (uranium enrichment)
TCA Trade Cooperation Agreement
TECDOCS Technical documents
TFEU Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (2012)
TRANSSC Committee on Transport Safety Standards
UN United Nations
UNAEC United Nations Atomic Energy Commission
UNCIO United Nations Conference on International Organization
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNECE United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
UNEP United Nations Environmental Programme
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UNGA United Nations General Assembly
Abbreviations xiii

UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund
UNIDIR United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research
UNSCEAR United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic
Radiation
UNTS United Nations Treaty Series
USIE Unified System for Information Exchange in Incidents
and Emergencies
USNRC United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission
VC Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage
(21 May 1963)
VCLT Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (23 May 1969)
VOA Voluntary offer agreement
VPF Value of a prevented fatality
WANO World Association of Nuclear Operators
WASSC Committee on Waste Safety Standards
WENRA Western European Nuclear Regulators’ Association
WHO World Health Organization
WMD Weapons of mass destruction
WMO World Meteorological Organization
Chapter 1
Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy and Its
Interrelationship with Nuclear Non-
proliferation and Disarmament

Jonathan L. Black-Branch and Dieter Fleck

Abstract The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is based on three equally

important pillars: non-proliferation of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explo-
sive devices; the development and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes;
and disarmament. Because of the strong interrelationship between these different
objectives, none of them can be examined in isolation. This Chapter explores this
interrelationship, focussing on the key issues of peaceful uses, i.e. safety and secu-
rity of nuclear material and facilities. It provides a précis of tasks and activities
towards this end, considers the relevant roles of nation States and the International
Atomic Energy Agency, and ultimately presents some conclusions for interna-
tional cooperation in this sensitive field where political discussion too often domi-
nates over legal analysis.

Jonathan L. Black-Branch Dean of Law and Professor of International and Comparative

Law at Robson Hall, Faculty of Law, University of Manitoba; a Barrister at One Garden Court,
London; a Magistrate in Oxfordshire; a Justice of the Peace for England & Wales; a Member of
Wolfson College, University of Oxford; and Chair of the International Law Association (ILA)
Committee on Nuclear Weapons, Non-Proliferation & Contemporary International Law.
Dieter Fleck Former Director International Agreements & Policy, Federal Ministry of
Defence, Germany; Member of the Advisory Board of the Amsterdam Center for International
Law (ACIL); Honorary President, International Society for Military Law and the Law of War;
Rapporteur of the ILA Committee on Nuclear Weapons, Non-Proliferation and Contemporary
International Law.

J.L. Black-Branch (*)

Faculty of Law, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]
D. Fleck
Richard-Wagner-Str. 30, 50999 Cologne, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]

© t.m.c. asser press and the authors 2016 1

J.L. Black-Branch and D. Fleck (eds.), Nuclear Non-Proliferation
in International Law—Volume III, DOI 10.1007/978-94-6265-138-8_1
2 J.L. Black-Branch and D. Fleck

Keywords International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) · Nuclear Non-Proliferation

Treaty (NPT) · Nuclear safety · Nuclear security · Peaceful uses of nuclear energy

Contents
1.1 Introduction.......................................................................................................................... 2
1.2 A Précis of Tasks and Activities to Ensure Nuclear Safety and Security............................. 6
1.3 The Role of States and the International Atomic Energy Agency....................................... 11
1.4 Conclusions and Outlook..................................................................................................... 16
References................................................................................................................................... 19

1.1 Introduction

Post World War II countries around the world explored their nuclear technological
options regarding both weapons as well as peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Early
attempts to dissuade States from developing nuclear weapons were viewed sceptically
as placing restrictions on their ability to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purpose.
President Eisenhower’s famous ‘Atoms for Peace’ speech in 19531 was a US concilia-
tory attempt to rein in nuclear ambitions following its earlier failure regarding non-
proliferation efforts. Indeed, the earlier Atomic Energy Act, passed by U.S. Congress
in 1946,2 included provisions designed to keep nuclear technology secret from other
countries, provisions that were later replaced by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954.3 The
‘Atoms for Peace’ plan would provide assistance to other countries in the peaceful
uses of atomic energy. That said, a comprehensive international agreement was neces-
sary to effectively tackle the growing conundrum of States wanting to develop nuclear
energy on the one hand and the international community wishing to address a grow-
ing concern relating to non-proliferation and disarmament on the other.
The adoption of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)4 was heralded as a
progressive step in this regard. Under the NPT the United States, Russia, the United
Kingdom, France and China are recognized as nuclear-weapon States.5 They under-
take ‘not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons …’ (Article I),
while all other State Parties undertake ‘not to receive the transfer … of nuclear
weapons …; not to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons …; … not to
seek or receive any assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons …’ (Article

1 Eisenhower 1953.
2 Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (Public Law 585, 70th Congress), https://www.osti.gov/atomic-
energyact.pdf, inter alia Sections 5, 7 and 10.
3 Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, inter alia, by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of

1978 (Public Law 83–703, 68 Stat. 919 83rd Congress), http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1327/

ML13274A489.pdf.
4 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1 July 1968) 729 UNTS 161.
5 Article IX(3) NPT states that, ‘a nuclear-weapon State is one which has manufactured and

exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to January 1, 1967’.
1 Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy and Its Interrelationship … 3

II); and ‘to accept safeguards’ (Article III). All Parties undertake to facilitate cooper-
ation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy (Article IV) and ‘to pursue negotiations
in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at
an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete
disarmament under strict and effective international control’ (Article VI).
The Treaty is thus based on three central pillars. The first pillar requires non-
proliferation of nuclear arms or other nuclear explosive devices; the second pillar,
which will be the primary focus of this Volume, ensures the inalienable right of all
Parties to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful pur-
poses; the third pillar requires effective measures towards disarmament. These three
pillars are inherently intertwined: As expected by the negotiating States, access to
peaceful uses of the atom without discrimination and peaceful nuclear coopera-
tion between States would support compliance with non-proliferation obligations,
compliance with the Treaty obligations on nuclear disarmament would increase the
effectiveness of nuclear non-proliferation, and cooperative activities would ensure
security and safety of the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
The present state of nuclear energy underlines the relevance of these complex
interrelationships on a global level. It also reveals continuing challenges for States
in fulfilling their respective obligations regarding nuclear safety and security. This
task is complex and demanding. As defined by the IAEA, nuclear safety comprises
‘the achievement of proper operating conditions, prevention of accidents and miti-
gation of accident consequences, resulting in protection of workers, the public and
the environment from undue radiation hazards;’ nuclear security is ‘the prevention
and detection of, and response to, theft, sabotage, unauthorized access, illegal
transfer or other malicious acts involving nuclear material, other radioactive sub-
stances or their associated facilities’. Yet, at least in IAEA practice, an exact dis-
tinction between the general terms safety and security does not exist. There are
borderline issues and significant overlap and synergy effects in the maintenance of
nuclear safety and security.6 This is well illustrated by the following figure:7

6 See IAEA 2007. As noted in this Glossary, there is ‘not an exact distinction between the gen-
eral terms safety and security.—In general, security is concerned with malicious or negligent
actions by humans that could cause or threaten harm to other humans; safety is concerned with
the broader issue of harm to humans (or the environment) from radiation, whatever the cause.
The precise interaction between security and safety depends on the context. “Safety and secu-
rity synergies” concern, for example: the regulatory infrastructure; engineering provisions in
the design and construction of nuclear installations and other facilities; controls on access to
nuclear installations and other facilities; the categorization of radioactive sources; source design;
the security of the management of radioactive sources and radioactive material; the recovery of
orphan sources; emergency response plans; and radioactive waste management.—Safety matters
are intrinsic to activities, and transparent and probabilistic safety analysis is used. Security mat-
ters concern malicious actions and are confidential, and threat based judgement is used.’
7 © International Atomic Energy Agency (see IAEA 2007), reproduced here with kind permis-

sion of the IAEA.

4 J.L. Black-Branch and D. Fleck

It is important to consider that despite complex and highly professional regula-

tory efforts to secure safety8 and security,9 there are significant deficiencies in
international cooperation, a fact that may seriously jeopardise the safe and secure
use of nuclear energy. While international nuclear safety standards have been con-
tinuously improved, still today these standards are not mandatory, neither is com-
pliance internationally controlled. Nuclear security continues to be under great
risks. Furthermore, a global liability regime for nuclear damage could not be
achieved so far.
The world-wide status of nuclear energy production for peaceful purposes, as
reported by the IAEA on a regular basis, reveals a progressive development. As of
31 December 2014, there are 438 operational nuclear power reactors in 30 coun-
tries around the world and 70 are under construction. Nuclear power generated
2410.4 terawatt-hours (TW·h) of electricity in 2014, and while this presently cor-
responds to less than 11 % of world electricity production, the lowest value since
1982, it is still significant and may again increase in future.10 In addition, there are

8 For a general overview see ElBaradei et al. (Eds.) 1993, Vols. 1 and 2, 151–1400. Significant
treaty improvements have been achieved since with the Convention on Nuclear Safety (20
September 1994), INFCIRC/449, 1963 UNTS 293; Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent
Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, INFCIRC/546 (29
September 1997); Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident (26 September 1986),
1439 UNTS 275, INFCIRC/335; Convention on Assistance in the Case of a Nuclear Accident
or Radiological Emergency (26 September 1986), 1457 UNTS 133, INFCIRC/336; International
Convention on Liability and Compensation for Damage in Connection with the Carriage of
Hazardous and Noxious Substances (3 May 1996), 35 ILM 1406, 1415 (1996); Convention
on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage—CSC—(12 September 1997),
INFCIRC/567, 36 ILM 1454 (1997); and, at regional level, the Council of Europe Convention
on Civil Liability for Damage Resulting from Activities Dangerous to the Environment (21 June
1993), 32 ILM 1228, 1230 (1993).
9 See below, Chap. 8 (Drobysz).
10 See IAEA 2014a, p. 1; IAEA 2014b; and IAEA 2015a, presenting in detail the status of

nuclear power as of 31 December 2014; see also IAEA, Power Reaction Information System
(PRIS), https://www.iaea.org/pris/, and the map at http://www.theguardian.com/environment/
interactive/2012/mar/08/nuclear-power-plants-world-map.
1 Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy and Its Interrelationship … 5

approximately 140 naval vessels using nuclear propulsion in operation.11 Yet

measures to ensure nuclear security and safety are often lagging behind and it is
increasingly expressed by experts that safe radioactive waste disposal will remain
an important burden for future generations.
Under the concept of State sovereignty, safety and security are the national
responsibility of States. Yet there is a growing need for tighter international legal
regulation. Damages would have border-crossing effects and physical require-
ments call for international observance and implementation. Moreover, existing
challenges have heightened and become more diverse both in nature and intensity,
due to increased activities by States and non-State actors. Yet such essential issues
as nuclear safety and licensing, radioactive waste disposal, radiation protection,
nuclear transport, and nuclear liability, are not fully regulated at international level
and no common standards are accepted as universally binding legal norms.12 The
Safety Standards promulgated by the IAEA13 have the advantage of meeting pro-
fessional requirements worldwide, but to become legally binding they need to be
fully transformed into national practice and effectively enforced. Still today, more
than six decades after the first nuclear power plants have commenced operation
and despite the major nuclear accidents which happened in Chernobyl 1986 and
Fukushima Daiichi 2011, the serious accident in Kyshtym (Russia) 1957, two
accidents with off-site risk (Windscale Pile, UK, 1957, and Three Mile Island off
Harrisburg, USA, 1979), and a number of minor accidents and incidents notwith-
standing,14 a global settlement is not in place. In certain fields safety and security
may be served effectively by cooperative approaches rather than by strict regula-
tion, but in other fields a universally binding regulation would be desirable. More
harmonization seems advisable in this respect, but sadly remains unrealistic. Thus
access to peaceful uses of the atom, a cornerstone of the NPT, which is so impor-
tant to ensure non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, remains loaded with prob-
lems. It is in no lesser degree than the control of nuclear non-proliferation as such,
that nuclear safety and security requires continued international attention and
monitoring.

11 These naval vessels are powered by some 180 reactors; see World Nuclear Association, http://

www.world-nuclear.org/info/Non-Power-Nuclear-Applications/Transport/Nuclear-Powered-
Ships/#.UV5yQsrpyJM; see also Hirdaris et al. 2014.
12 See Manóvil 2014, pp 135–306; 307–422; 423–468; 491–503; 633–807.
13 IAEA 2015c.
14 See The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), https://www.iaea.org/ns/

tutorials/regcontrol/appendix/app96.htm?w=1Three+Mile+Island; https://www.iaea.org/sites/
default/files/ines.pdf. Such events have occurred in Ascó (Spain); Atucha (Argentina); Blayais
(France); Buenos Aires (Argentina); Chalk River (Canada); Forsmark (Sweden); Goiâna (Brazil);
Gundremmingen (Germany); Gravelines (France); Jaslovské Bohunice (Czech Republic); Krško
(Slovenia); Lucens/ Vaud (Switzerland); Mayak (Russia); Paks (Hungary); Penly (France); Saint-
Laurent (France); Sellafield (UK); Shika (Japan); SL-1 Experimental Power Station Idaho (US);
Tokaimura (Japan); Vandellos (Spain); and Windscale Reprocessing Plant (UK).
6 J.L. Black-Branch and D. Fleck

A risk assessment of current developments requires an inter-disciplinary

approach today, which necessarily includes a solid evaluation of the state of com-
pliance with existing law; a legal evaluation of current loopholes in regulation; and
a realistic assessment of the effectiveness of implementation.
This Chapter undertakes to examine key legal aspects of the inalienable right
to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes
from its most important perspective, i.e. safety and security. Based on the compre-
hensive contributions gathered in this Volume, we explore deficiencies in regula-
tion on the background of related legal obligations on nuclear non-proliferation
and disarmament, endeavouring to identify important open tasks for international
cooperation (Part 1.2). The Role of States and the IAEA is addressed with a view
to highlight international responsibilities, to explore existing gaps and consider
possibilities for improving current forms of cooperation (Part 1.3). Some conclu-
sions are offered to facilitate implementation (Part 1.4).

1.2 A Précis of Tasks and Activities to Ensure

Nuclear Safety and Security

Nuclear safety and security remain significant areas of concern requiring full com-
pliance and progressive development at local, regional and international levels.
Contemporary legal analysis will assist in identifying problems and offering direc-
tion for regulatory frameworks as well as cooperation in this important field where
both States and non-State actors are increasingly asserting certain negligence,
and even defiance. This volume seeks to provide a compendium of contributions
to salient legal issues regarding the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,
combined with an assessment of the state of implementation in this field.
Daniel Rietiker takes an unusual, yet necessary perspective on the use of
nuclear energy for peaceful purposes: the protection of human rights, whereby
civil as well as economic, social and cultural rights are equally taken into account.
Considering that an appropriate use of nuclear energy can contribute to the enjoy-
ment of the right to health, the right to a good standard of living, including ade-
quate food and drinking water, as well as the right to respect for private life, he
argues that States are under an obligation to actively pursue the fulfilment of these
human rights, in particular through electricity production and its practical applica-
tions in agriculture, industry, medicine, biology and hydrology. He also shows that
the right to use nuclear energy is not unlimited and that those limits derive not
only from the non-proliferation obligations established by the NPT, but essentially
from safety for present and future generations from nuclear accidents, radioactive
waste disposal and health dangers for workers in uranium mines. Human rights are
thus not only an enabler for peaceful uses of the atom, but also a significant barrier
to an unfettered exploitation. While States do enjoy a broad margin of apprecia-
tion as regards the question how to fulfil their human rights duties in a responsible
manner, these rights and limitations are to be observed.
1 Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy and Its Interrelationship … 7

Seth A. Hoedl shows that a global expansion of nuclear power may challenge
the present nuclear non-proliferation regime and inhibit movement towards a
world with few, if any, nuclear weapons. To resolve the inherent dual use problems
in the use of nuclear energy he advocates a new legal principle according to which
peaceful use activities would be limited to those that are licensed by an interna-
tional agency, while any non-licensed activity would be presumed non-peaceful.
This licensing approach might provide an alternative to multinational enrichment
and fuel banks for managing an expansion of nuclear power, without recourse to
international ownership. It might be both easier to implement than multinational
ownership proposals and provide additional non-proliferation advantages. After
discussing how an expansion of nuclear power can challenge the existing regime,
he explains the proposed licensing approach in detail, including key license terms,
international relationships and obligations, an implementation path, and existing
precedents for controlling sensitive technology through licensing. International
licensing of nuclear technologies might constrain the most sensitive aspects of the
nuclear fuel cycle, give confidence to the global community that uranium enrich-
ment and spent fuel reprocessing facilities were not being misused, and concur-
rently preserve, in a non-discriminatory fashion, the right of all States to pursue
peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Tariq Rauf and Usman I. Jadoon follow a different perspective by discuss-
ing requirements and possibilities for a treaty prohibiting the Production and
Stockpiling of weapon-usable material. While a fissile material cut-off treaty
(FMCT), or fissile material treaty (FMT), was originally conceived as a measure
to prevent additional States developing nuclear weapons and to limit the stocks of
fissile material for States already possessing nuclear weapons, no solution could
be found for decades. Nuclear-weapon States pushed for a treaty that would only
prohibit future production, while several non-nuclear-weapon States favoured two
parallel objectives—nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament—and
the inclusion of existing stocks and also their elimination. The two authors find it
illogical to consider the start of FMT negotiations without the inclusion of exist-
ing stocks in the scope, as all weapon-usable material should be brought under
accountability and transparency, a principle that is is essential for achieving a
world without nuclear weapons.
Ilaria Anna Colussi again takes a broader perspective both on the advantages
and the risks of the nuclear area by considering social, ethical, legal, environmen-
tal and political values based on a comprehensive analysis. Aiming at a balance
between the freedom of research and development on the one side and the safety
and security needs on the other, she develops the notion of ‘responsible steward-
ship’ based on cooperation between all stakeholders, a proportional balance of
interests, values and rights at stake, and periodical review of the proper function of
this balance in a responsible process.
Jürgen Grunwald, addressing specific requirements and opportunities of the
European Atomic Energy Community, shows an important new dimension of the
EURATOM Treaty: Whereas the promotional aspects highlighted by its founding
fathers had almost vanished by now, the obligations imposed by the Treaty in the
Other documents randomly have
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of In an Unknown
Prison Land
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Title: In an Unknown Prison Land

Author: George Chetwynd Griffith

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN AN UNKNOWN PRISON

LAND ***
 Frontispiece.

IN AN UNKNOWN
PRISON LAND
AN ACCOUNT OF CONVICTS AND
COLONISTS IN NEW CALEDONIA
WITH JOTTINGS OUT AND HOME

BY
GEORGE GRIFFITH
AUTHOR OF “MEN WHO HAVE MADE THE
EMPIRE,” “THE VIRGIN OF THE SUN,”
A TALE OF THE CONQUEST OF PERU,
“BRITON OR BOER?” A STORY OF THE
FIGHT FOR AFRICA, ETC., ETC.

WITH A PORTRAIT AND NUMEROUS

ILLUSTRATIONS

London: HUTCHINSON & CO

Paternoster Row 1901

PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON, AND VINEY, LD.
LONDON AND AYLESBURY

To

THE EARL OF DUNMORE

WHOSE KINDNESS AND HOSPITALITY MADE MY
SOJOURN IN PRISON-LAND MUCH MORE
PLEASANT THAN IT MIGHT
HAVE BEEN.
 CONTENTS
PAGE

Part I
A STREAK THROUGH THE STATES
I. DUTIES AND DOLLARS 3
II. CONCERNING CITIES, WITH A PARENTHESIS ON MANNERS 17
III. THE QUEEN OF THE GOLDEN STATE 34
A SEA-INTERLUDE 51

Part II
PRISON LAND
A PRELIMINARY NOTE ON CONVICTS AND COLONISTS 83
I. SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS 96
II. SOME SOCIAL SIDELIGHTS 109
III. ILE NOU 128
IV. MEASUREMENT AND MANIA 143
V. A CONVICT ARCADIA 160
VI. SOME HUMAN DOCUMENTS 176
VII. THE PLACE OF EXILES 194
VIII. A PARADISE OF KNAVES 202
IX. USE FOR THE USELESS 219
X. A LAND OF WOOD AND IRON 236
XI. MOSTLY MOSQUITOS AND MICROBES 262

Part III
HOMEWARD BOUND
I. “TWENTY YEARS AFTER” 279
II. DEMOS AND DEAR MONEY 290
III. A COSMOPOLITAN COLONY 303
 NOTE
The last sentence on p. 137 should read:
“The Cachots Noirs were never opened except at stated intervals,—once
every morning for inspection, and once every thirty days for exercise and a
medical examination of the prisoner.” I am glad to be able to state on the
authority of the Minister of Colonies that this terrible punishment has now
been made much less severe. Every seventh day the prisoner is placed for a
day in a light cell; he is also given an hour’s exercise every day; and the
maximum sentence has been reduced to two years, subject to the medical
veto. In the text I have described what I saw; but this atrocity is now, happily,
a thing of the past.—G. G.
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Portrait of the Author Frontispiece.
Two Snapshots up and down the Rio Sacramento, taken as
the train was crossing the bridge Page 30
Diamond Head, Honolulu ” 54
Sanford B. Dole. First Governor of the Territory of Hawaii ” 62
A Lake in the interior of New Caledonia ” 86
The Plague Area at Noumea. Offices of the Messageries
Maritimes, with Sentries in front ” 100
The Convict Band playing in the Kiosk in the Place des
Cocotiers, Noumea ” 116
The Town and Harbour of Noumea ” 120
In the Harbour, Noumea ” 122
The Inner Court of the Central Prison, Ile Nou ” 136
The Central Prison, Ile Nou ” 142
The Bureau of Anthropometry, Ile Nou ” 146
An Arab Type of Convict. A combination of Ideality and
Homicidal Mania ” 148
The Courtyard of a Disciplinary Camp, Ile Nou ” 150
The Avenue of Palms, leading to the Hospital, Ile Nou ” 154
Part of the Hospital Buildings, Ile Nou ” 156
The Island of “Le Sphinx,” one of the tying-up places on the
south-west coast of New Caledonia ” 162
A Native Temple, New Caledonia ” 168
Permit to visit a Prison or Penitentiary Camp en détail ” 176
The Kiosk in which the Convict Courtships were conducted at
Bourail ” 180
Berezowski, the Polish Anarchist who attempted to murder
Napoleon III. and the Tsar Alexander II. in the Champs
Elysées ” 184
One of the Lowest Types of Criminal Faces ” 190
The Peninsula of Ducos ” 194
The remains of Henri Rochefort’s House ” 200
The Bedroom of Louis Chatelain, ”The Caledonian Dreyfus”
in Ducos ” 200
The “Market” in the Convent, Isle of Pines ” 212
The Convict Railway at Prony ” 240
The Mines of the International Copper Co., Pilou, New
Caledonia ” 266
The Saloon of the Ballande Liner, St. Louis ” 270
The Quarantine Station, North Head, Sydney ” 282
The Storage House at Seppeltsfield, forty years ago ” 309
The Present Storage House ” 308
Grape-crushing by machinery, at Seppeltsfield ” 312
A Vineyard at Seppeltsfield, South Australia ” 316
 Part I
A STREAK THROUGH THE STATES

I
DUTIES AND DOLLARS

It was on the fifth night out from Southampton that the threatening shadow
of the American Custom House began to fall over the company in the saloon.
One could see ladies talking nervously together. The subject was the one
most dear to the female heart; but the pleasure of talking about “things” was
mingled—at least in the hearts of the uninitiated—with an uneasiness which,
in not a few cases, amounted to actual fear; for that evening certain forms
had been distributed by the purser, and these forms contained questions
calculated to search out the inmost secret of every dress-basket and Saratoga
trunk on board.
By the time you had filled in the blanks, if you had done it honestly—as, of
course, no one except myself did—you had not only given a detailed list of
your wardrobe, but you had enumerated in a separate schedule every article
that you had bought new in Europe.
You were graciously permitted to possess one hundred dollars’, or, say,
twenty pounds’ worth of personal effects. If you had more than that you were
treated as a commercial traveller importing dry goods, and had to pay duty in
case you sold them again, and thus came into competition with the infant
industries of Uncle Sam.
At the foot of the schedule was a solemn declaration that you had given
your wardrobe away to the last pocket-handkerchief, and the next day you
had to repeat this declaration verbally to an urbane official, who was polite
enough to look as though he believed you.
When it came to the actual examination in the wharf-shed, I found myself
wondering where Uncle Sam’s practical commonsense came in. You had to
take a paper, given to you on board in exchange for your declaration, to a
desk at which sat a single clerk.
As there were about four hundred first- and second-class passengers, this
took some little time, and provoked considerable language. When you had at
length struggled to the desk the clerk gave you a ticket, beckoned to a
gentleman in uniform, handed him your paper, and remarked:
“Here, George, see to this.”
In my case George seemed to have a pressing engagement somewhere
else, for he went off and I never set eyes on him again. My modest effects, a
steamer trunk, a Gladstone-bag, and a camera-case, lay frankly open to the
gaze of all men in cold neglect, while small mountains of trunks were opened,
their contents tickled superficially by the lenient fingers of the examiners,
closed again, and carted off.
A couple of hours later, when I had interviewed every official in the shed on
the subject of the missing George, and made a general nuisance of myself, I
was requested to take my things out and not worry—or words to that effect.
Outside I met a fellow-voyager, who informed me that he and his wife had
taken thirteen trunks full of dutiable stuff through without paying a cent of
duty—at least not to the Exchequer of the United States Customs.
He had been through before and knew his man. It may have cost him ten
dollars, but Uncle Sam would have wanted three or four hundred; wherefore it
is a good thing to know your man when you land at New York with a wife and
a two years’ wardrobe.
From this it will be seen that there was none of that turning out of trunks
and shameless, heartless exhibition of things that should only be seen in shop
windows before they are bought, which one heard so much about a few years
ago. That is practically stopped now, and it was stopped by the officials
themselves.
They didn’t scatter precious, if unmentionable, garments around the shed
floor out of pure devilry or levity of soul. The American official is like any
other; he wants to earn his salary as easily as possible, and the new tariff
regulations gave him a tremendous lot of work, so he took counsel with
himself and came to the astute conclusion that if he systematically outraged
the tenderest sentiments of the wives and daughters of millionaires, senators,
congressmen, political bosses, and other American sovereigns for a certain
period either the regulations would have to be considerably watered down or
there would be another civil war.
 His conclusions were perfectly correct. The big customs officials faced the
music stubbornly for a time; then invitations to dinner and the most select
social functions began to fall off. Their wives and daughters lost many
opportunities of showing off the pretty frocks which they had smuggled in
from Europe.
Election time came near—in other words, Judgment Day for every American
official from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It was openly hinted in high places that
the authors of such outrages on America’s proudest matrons and most dainty
maidens were soulless brutes who weren’t fit to hold office, and then the
United States Customs Department came down on its knees, kissed the hems
of the garments it had scattered around the shed floor, and, as usual, the
Eternal Feminine had conquered.
In Paul Leicester Ford’s delightful word-picture of American political life,
“The Honourable Peter Sterling,” the worthy Peter delivers a dinner-table
homily on the immorality of five hundred first-class steamboat passengers
conspiring to defraud the revenue of their native land by means of false
declarations such as most of us signed on the St. Louis.
I was surprised to find that Peter, a shrewd politician and successful ward-
boss, knew so little of human nature.
Never from now till the dawn of the millennium abolishes the last Customs
House will men and women be convinced that it is immoral or even wrong to
smuggle. It is simply a game between the travellers and the officials. If they
are caught they pay. If not the man smokes his cigars with an added gusto,
and the woman finds a new delight in wearing a dainty costume which all the
arts of all the Worths and all the Redferns on earth could never give her—and
of such were the voyagers on the St. Louis.[1]
Before I got to bed that night I had come to the conclusion that no country
was ever better described in a single phrase than America was by poor G. W.
Steevens when he called it the Land of the Dollar.
From the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from Maine to Mexico, you simply can’t
get away from it. In other countries people talk about money,—generally and
incidentally about pounds, or francs, or marks, or pesetas,—but in America it
is dollars first, last, and all the time.
Where an Englishman would say a man was keen on making money, an
American would say “he’s out for dollars.” On this side we speak of making a
fortune, over there it’s “making a pile,”—of dollars understood,—and so on.
 But there is another sense in which the pungent phrase is true. I am not
going to commit myself to the assertion that everything in the States is a
dollar, because there are many things which cost more than a dollar. There
are also some—a few—which cost less, such as newspapers and tramcar
tickets, but, as a rule, when you put your hand into your pocket a dollar
comes out—often several—and you don’t have much change.
Thus, when I had released my baggage from the lax grip of the United
States Customs, I took a carriage ticket at the desk. Three dollars. In London
the fare from the station to the hotel would have been about half a crown.
The gentleman who put my luggage up received a quarter. If I had offered
him less he would probably have declined it and asked me, with scathing
irony, to come and have a drink at his expense.
Still, that carriage was a carriage, and not a cab; well-hung, well-cushioned,
and well-horsed. In fact, I was not many hours in New York before I began to
see that, although you pay, you get. Everything from a banquet to a boot-
shine is done in better style than it is in England.
“We are very full, sir,” said the clerk at the Murray Hill Hotel; “but I can give
you a four-dollar room. I daresay you’ll like a comfortable night after your
passage.”
I thought sixteen shillings and eightpence a good deal for a room, but I
found that the room was really a suite, a big bed-sitting-room, beautifully
furnished, with bathroom, lavatory, and clothes-cupboard attached.
The next morning I had a shine which cost fivepence, but that shine lasted
all the way to San Francisco. The boots simply needed dusting and they were
as bright as ever. Then I went and had a shilling shave, and found that the
American shave is to the English one as a Turkish bath is to a cold tub; and so
on throughout. You spend more money, far more, than in England, but you
get a great deal more for it. But to this rule there is one great and glorious
exception, and that is railway travelling.
I presented my ordinary first-class tickets at the booking-office in the
Central Depôt, and then came from the lips of the keen-faced, but most polite
and obliging clerk, the inevitable “five dollars please—and if you’re going on
the South-Western Limited it will be one dollar more. You see this is one of
the fastest trains in the world, and we keep it select. You’ll have a section to
yourself all the way.”
I checked my trunk in the baggage-office and said a thankful good-bye to it
for three thousand two hundred miles, after buying a new strap for it, which,
curiously enough, was not a dollar, but seventy-five cents. Then I took
possession of my cosy corner in the long, luxuriously furnished car to be
whirled over a thousand miles of iron road in twenty-three hours and a half.
Soon after we had pulled out of New York and the bogey wheels had begun
the deep-voiced hum which was to last day and night for the inside of a week,
I saw something which struck me again and again in the run across the
continent. A big American city is like a robe of cloth of gold with a frayed and
tattered border of dirty cotton. Its outskirts are unutterably ragged and
squalid.
A few minutes after you leave the splendid streets and squares of Central
New York you are running through a region of mean and forlorn-looking
wooden huts—really, they can hardly be called houses—crowded up together
in terraces or blocks beside broad, unpaved roads, which may some day be
streets, or standing in little lots of their own, scraps of unkempt land, too
small for fields, and as much like gardens as a dumping-ground for London
rubbish. All the houses wanted painting, and most of them repairing. The
whole aspect was one of squalid poverty and mean discomfort.
But these soon fell behind the flying wheels of the South-Western Limited.
Another region was entered, a region of stately pleasure-houses standing
amidst broad, well-wooded lands, and presently the great train swept with a
stately swing round a sloping curve, and then began one of the loveliest
railway runs in the world, the seventy-mile-an-hour spin along the level, four-
track road which lies beside the eastern bank of the broad and beautiful
Hudson.
It was during this delicious spin that I went into the smoking-room to have
a pipe and something else. I sat down in a seat opposite to a man whose
appearance stamped him as one of those quietly prosperous Americans who
just go to their work and do it with such splendid thoroughness that the doing
of it saves their country from falling into the social and political chaos that
some other Americans would make of it if they could.
He gave me a light, and we began talking. If it had been in an English train
we might have glared at each other for five hundred miles without a word. As
it was, we had begun to know each other in half an hour. We talked about the
Hudson, and the Catskills, and West Point, and then about the train, and so
the talk came back to the inevitable dollar.
“A gorgeous train this,” I said; “far and away beyond anything we have in
England. But,” I added with uncalculating haste, “it seems to me pretty
expensive.”
 “Excuse me,” he said, “I don’t think you’ve figured it out. You’re going to
San Francisco, thirty-two hundred miles from here. All the way you have a
comfortable train,”—that was his lordly way of putting it,—“you have servants
to wait on you day and night, a barber to shave you, a stenographer to
dictate your letters to, and you never need get off the train except for the
change at Chicago.
“When you get to San Francisco you will find that the total cost works out
at about three cents a mile, say three halfpence. I believe the legal first-class
fare in England—without sleeping-accommodation, in fact without anything
you have here except a place to sit down in—is threepence a mile.”
I didn’t make the calculation, because when we subsequently exchanged
cards I found I was talking to the President of the Mercantile Transportation
Company, a man who knows just about as much of travel by land and sea as
there is to be learnt.
After this we got on to railroading generally. I learnt much, and in the
learning thereof came to think even less of British railway methods than I had
done before. I learnt why it was cheaper to carry grain a thousand miles from
Chicago to New York than it is to carry it a couple of hundred miles from
Yorkshire to London; why cattle can be carried over thousands of miles of
prairie at less cost than over hundreds of miles of English railroads; and many
other things all bearing on the question of the dollar and how to save it—for
your true American is just as keen on saving as he is lavish in spending—
which I thought might well be taught and still better learnt on this side.
It was during this conversation that I had an example of that absolutely
disinterested kindness with which the wanderer so often meets in America
and so seldom in England.
“By the way,” said Mr. President, “have you taken your berth from Chicago
in the Overland Limited?”
“No,” I said; “I was told I could telegraph for it from Buffalo.”
“Well,” he said, “you know the train is limited and will probably be pretty
full. There’s quite a number of people going west just now. However, don’t
trouble; I guess I can fix that for you.”
Now, I had never seen this man before, and the probability was that I
should never meet him again, and yet when I got to the North-Western Depôt
at Chicago there was a section in the centre of one of the newest and most
luxurious cars reserved for me.
 “Mr. Griffith?” said the clerk, as I presented my transportation tickets.
“That’s all right, sir. Your section’s engaged. Here’s your check, ‘2 D, San
Vincente.’ Got a porter? Well, you can have your baggage taken down right
away. She pulls out 3.30 sharp. Seventeen dollars, please.”

II
CONCERNING CITIES, WITH A PARENTHESIS ON MANNERS

I have seen cities in many parts of the world, from the smoke-grimed,
flame-crowned, cloud-canopied hives of industry of middle and Northern
England, of Belgium, and Northern France, to the marble palaces and broad-
verandahed bungalows which sleep among the palm-groves by the white
shores of tropic seas; but never—north, south, east, or west—have I seen a
collection of human habitations and workshops so utterly hopeless, so
irretrievably ugly as that portion of Chicago about which I wandered during
my three hours’ wait for the starting of the Overland Limited.
The roadways—really one cannot call them streets—would of themselves
have been far inferior to similar streets in Manchester or Wolverhampton,
because here at least the streets are paved. In Chicago they are not.
Many years ago an attempt seems to have been made to pave them, but
the stones have sunk, and the mud and slush have come up, and every
variety of filth covers them except about the lines over which the tramcars
rush, hissing and clanging on their headlong way. But the roadways of
Chicago are also tunnels, for over them stretches the solid, continuous iron
arch of the overhead railway whence come the roar of wheels, the snorting of
steam-engines, the shriek of whistles, and the wailing groan of the brakes.
Now and then you reach a crossing or open place where you emerge from
the tunnel, out of semi-darkness into comparative light, and you see vast
shapes of stiff-angled, steep-roofed buildings lifting their sixteenth or
seventeenth storey up into the murky, smoke-laden sky. They are part and
parcel of Chicago—huge, ugly, dirty, and exceedingly useful.
There are big buildings in New York, but they are to the Chicago buildings
as palaces compared to factories. There are others in San Francisco which are
merely eccentricities and not altogether unpicturesque, but the Chicago sky-
scraper is a sort of architectural fungus, an insulting excrescence from the
unoffending earth, which makes you long to get big guns and shoot at it. Still,
it is useful, and serves the purpose for which it was built, and that is why
Chicago is not only content with it, but even proud of it.
Believing many things that were said to me afterwards, I doubt not that
Chicago, elsewhere and other than I saw it, is one of the finest and most
beautiful cities on earth. Far be it from me to believe otherwise, since some
day I hope to see it again; and he who thinks ill of Chicago will have about as
good a time there as a man who thinks well of New York.
Still, common honesty obliges me to say that the impression which I took
away with me in the Overland Limited was one of vastness, uncleanness, and
ugliness, redeemed only by that sombre, Plutonic magnificence which seems
to be the one reward of an absolute and unhesitating sacrifice to blank utility.
And yet I did find one view in Chicago which qualified this, and that was
from the western end of the Lake Front. The ragged steamboat piers, the long
rows of posts marking the shoals, the piles of the groynes, one or two
dilapidated and almost prehistoric steamboats, and blistered, out-of-date
yachts laid up along the lake wall, the stately sweep of houses, the huge bulks
of the factories in the east, with their towering chimneys pouring out clouds of
smoke and steam—these, with the smooth water of the horizonless lake,
made a pleasanter mental photograph to take away with one than the
unlovely roaring streets and the hideous wealth-crammed stores and
warehouses.
From Chicago to Ogden the route of the Union Pacific is about as
uninteresting as the central section of the Canadian Pacific, only here the
towns and villages are more frequent and the country is naturally far more
advanced in cultivation.
Cities, of course, are numerous. They vary in size from two to fifty thousand
inhabitants; but structurally they are all the same—tin-roofed houses of
weather-board, banks and offices, stores and factories, and elevators of brick
ranged along wide and mostly unpaved roads with plank side-walks.
No apparent attempt has been made at order or uniformity. Where a big
building is wanted there it is put, and where a little wooden shanty serves its
purpose there it remains.
There is plenty of elbow-room, and so the village spreads itself into the city
in a quite promiscuous fashion, something like a boy left to grow up into a
man according to his own sweet will. But be it well noted that he becomes a
man all the same, for every one of these cities, big or small, wood or brick, or
both, was teeming with life and humming with business.
One of the many visible signs of this could be seen in the number of
telegraph-wires slung on huge unsightly poles running up both sides of the
unkempt streets; in fact, an American inland city of five thousand inhabitants
seems to do a good deal more telegraphing and telephoning than an English
town of fifty thousand.
One other feature of the villages, towns, and “cities” along the route struck
me rather forcibly. Nearly all of them, big and little, have very fine stations—I
beg pardon, depôts. In fact, the practice seems to be to build a fine, big
depôt and let the city grow up to it. Thus, for instance, at Omaha City, where
we had a half-hour’s wait changing horses and looking out for hot boxes, I
found the depôt built of grey granite, floored with marble, and entered by two
splendid twin staircases curving down through a domed and pillared hall to
spacious waiting-rooms and offices opening on to a platform about a quarter
of a mile long.
It was the sort of station you would expect to find in a go-ahead English or
European city that possessed streets and squares and houses to match. Now
Omaha is go-ahead, and big, and busy, but for all you can see of it from the
train and station it is scattered promiscuously around hill and dale, and the
palatial station itself stands in the midst of a waste of sloppy roads traversed
as usual by the hurrying electric trams, and bordered by little, shabby, ill-
assorted wooden houses which don’t look worth fifty pounds apiece. For all
that, Omaha is one of the busiest and wealthiest cities of the Middle States.
At Ogden, where the iron roads from every part of the continent seem to
meet, and where big, high-shouldered engines from Mexico and Texas
whistled their greetings to brother monsters from Maine and California, I felt
sorely tempted to stop off and take the thirty-mile run to Salt Lake City, but

“The steamer won’t wait for the train,”

and I should have risked missing my boat to Honolulu—added to which I had

made some friends on the train who were going to show me round San
Francisco in case I had a day or so there, so I read my Kipling instead, and
saw the Mormon city with keener eyes than mine.
By the way, American manners appear to have altered very much for the
better since Kipling made his journey “From Sea to Sea.” I traversed a good
deal of the same ground, and stayed at some of the same hotels that he did,
but I never met with more straight-spoken, dignified courtesy in any part of
the world.
I never saw hotel clerks who blazed with diamonds, or who treated me like
a worm. As a matter of fact I never met more polite, obliging, well-informed
men in any similar position. Certainly they could give many points to hotel
managers and clerks in England and Australia.
The waiters, too, both white and black, must have vastly improved. The
white waiter in America, as I found him, is quite the smartest, most
intelligent, and, in his own manly way, the most polite of his class—a class
very well typified by the bugler of the St. Louis. His coloured confrère does his
work deftly, silently, and well.
Kipling relates a conversation which took place in the Palace Hotel between
a coloured waiter and himself, in which George—every servant in America
whose name you don’t know is George—made the remark:
“Oh ——! Wages like that wouldn’t keep me in cigars!”
I stayed at the Palace in San Francisco, and from what I heard and saw I
should say that a waiter who made a remark like that nowadays would very
soon find that cigars were an unattainable luxury to a man out of work. He
would be “fired” on the spot.
My own experience certainly is that the Americans are the politest people
on earth, or, perhaps I ought to say, the most courteous, because any one
can be polite if it pays him. Only a gentleman can be courteous. They have
learnt, apparently at the hands of Mother Nature herself, that subtle blending
of politeness and dignity which we call courtesy.
For instance, an American waiter, or barber, or shoeblack says “Sir” quite
differently to anybody else in the world, except perhaps the American
gentleman who may be worth his millions. There is no suspicion of cringing or
inferiority about it, whether it comes from the shoeblack or the millionaire. It
seems to say equally from the one as from the other “our circumstances may
be different, but we are both of us gentlemen in our way, and so we will
behave to each other as gentlemen,” and politeness of that sort is the
pleasantest of all politeness.
Now, in Australia—but Australia is still seven thousand miles away across
the broad Pacific, so we will talk about that later on. Meanwhile a couple of
iron giants have been harnessed to the long line of palace-cars, the mails
have been exchanged from train to train, the bells begin to swing and clang
out soft musical warning notes, the mellow whistles sing good-bye from
engine to engine; “all aboard” is the word, and the Overland Limited threads
its way through the maze of shining metals, and heads away westward to
where a long, gleaming line of silver backed by a black screen of mountains
tipped with diamonds shows the position of the Inland Sea of the Wilderness.
Salt Lake, the Dead Sea of the Mormon Land of Promise, is smaller now by
a good many scores of square miles than it was some thirty years ago, when
the Southern Pacific was connected up with the Union Pacific, and so
completed the iron chain which links the Hudson with the Sacramento.
For three or four hours the train runs over embankments surrounded by
vast salt mud-flats, which in those days were covered by the fast-shrinking
waters. It is the old story, the story of nearly all these upland desert regions.
Every year less rain falls in the valleys and less snow on the mountains. As the
clouds grow thinner and fewer the sun blazes hotter and sucks up more and
more vapour, and so year by year the waters of the Great Salt Lake are
getting less great and more salt.
With all due deference to American susceptibility on such points, I must say
that the scenery of the Rockies which one sees from the windows of a car on
the Union Pacific does not begin to compare with the scenery along the
Canadian Pacific line. Even Echo Cañon and Weber Cañon, the show places of
the line, struck me as comparatively insignificant when I remembered the
splendours of Eagle Pass and the grandeurs of Bear Cañon.
But when the wilderness of Nevada had been cast behind our flying wheels,
and we began to climb up the wooded foothills of the Sierra Nevada—that
snow-crowned mountain wall which divides one of the dreariest from one of
the most beautiful regions on earth, the Great American Desert from “God’s
own country”—it was time to sit up and use both your eyes and do your best
to look out at both sides of the car at once.
It was here that the last and most beautiful stretch of the thirty-two-
hundred-mile run began. Up the straight grades and round and round the
twice and thrice-tiered loops the great train twined and circled; now skirting
the shore of a still, pine-fringed lake, filling the bottom of a mountain valley;
and now burrowing under the long snow-sheds, groaning under their weight
of snow far away up the mountain-side, and so, mile by mile of distance, and
yard by yard of height, the top of the Great Divide was reached.
The iron horses took a rest and a long drink at Alta, the summit station,
and then,

“Down the valley with our guttering breaks a-squeal,”

we started on our way to that lovely land which lies between the mountains
and the sea.
The snow vanished; first from the sides of the track, and then from the
gullies between the hills round which we twined. The mist-clouds rolled away
behind us up the wooded slopes. The snow-peaks far beyond gleamed out
above them, and ahead and below the dropping sun shone on a land of
broken red hills, and, beyond them, over a vast level stretch of green grass
and fruit-land, with a broad river flowing through it.
Beyond this again it glimmered far and faintly on a long streak of flickering
silver. The red hills were the native land of Truthful James; the green plains
below were the Valley of the Sacramento; and the shimmering silver in the far
distance was the Pacific Ocean, whose character I propose hereafter to revise.
Then we rushed down through the last cañon out on to an open slope, and
pulled up at Red Gulch. That is not its name on the time-tables, but it ought
to be.
A freight truck had got off the line about two miles lower down. So, instead
of a stop of ten minutes, we had to wait two hours, which I thankfully
employed in making a little excursion through Bret Harte Land, the land of red
earth and yellow gold, of towering pines and flower-filled valleys, of
deliciously mingled beauty and ugliness; where the skies are as blue as they
are above the Isles of the South, and the air seems like what one would
expect to breathe in Paradise.
Climbing down from the car was like getting out of the world of reality, as
represented by the Overland Limited (which, remember, had brought me from
Chicago) into the Garden of Romance. I had left the comfortable but
emphatically materialistic gorgeousness of the Pulman Palace-car, and I was
actually standing on the same earth that Jack Hamlyn had trodden, and I was
breathing the same air that he had inspired when he sang that famous song.
All around I could see gashes of red amid the green and brown of the
slopes along the river banks—just such gulches as the one Tennessee lived in
with his immortal partner. Somewhere up in the dark valleys through which
the Overland Limited had just thundered the Outcasts of Poker Flat had found
their last refuge, and John Oakhurst, after pinning that inscribed Deuce of
Spades to the pine-tree with his bowie-knife, had passed in his checks like a
gambler and a gentleman.
In just such a little schoolhouse as stood near the depôt, Mliss had flung
down her astronomy book and paralysed one part of her audience and
ecstasied the other by that famous heresy of hers re the Miracle of Joshua.
“It’s a damned lie. I don’t believe a word of it.”
Down yonder, in the lowlands across the river, not very far from its junction
with a tributary, might have been North Fork and Poverty Flat; and just such a
red hole as I found a hundred yards or so from the track might have been the
forty-foot grave into which Dow descended “with a derringer hid in his
breast,” making his last despairing search for water—and finding gold.
The clang of the bell and the soft “hoo-too” of the whistle called me back
out of my dream as I was having a drink at just such a bar as the gallant
Colonel Starbottle might have slaked his immortal thirst at. A few moments
more and the tireless wheels had begun to revolve again, and we slid down
the curving slopes leading to the broad vale of the Sacramento.
 Two Snapshots up and down the Rio Sacramento, taken as
the train was crossing the bridge.

On the way to the Golden Land I had fallen into conversation with a young
Californian, a fine specimen of the Western race, of whom his country might
well be proud, as he was proud of it.
“It’s God’s own country, sir. And when you’ve seen more of it you’ll think
so,” he said, as we swept across the fat, fertile farmlands which lay beneath
the foot-hills. “You’ve travelled a bit, you tell me; but I guess if you go from
end to end of this country you’ll say you never struck one like it.”
 “Well,” I said, “I sha’n’t see much of it this time, I’m afraid; but if I ever do
get the chance of seeing it right through I’ll tell you whether I think it’s better
than England.”
“Yes,” he replied reflectively, “I’ve an uncle who went to England, and he
came back, right to home here, and said it was the most beautiful place God
had ever made—but then, you see, it was new to him. He hadn’t been over
there before.”
I thought that this wasn’t a bad place to change the subject, so I asked him
to have a drink, and switched off on to purely local topics. We crossed the big
bridge over the Sacramento river, stopped a few minutes in Sacramento City,
and then rolled on to Porta Costa station.
I have heard people say that they have gone from New York to San
Francisco by rail. This is one of those sayings which are wanting in certain
qualifications of fact to make them unimpeachable. It is nearly true, but not
quite.
The train, weighing I am afraid to say how many tons, ran into Porta Costa,
which is a sort of detachable depôt on the estuary of the Sacramento river.
When it stopped I got out of the car to have a look round. There was a “local”
and a freight train lying alongside of us. There was also a vast superstructure
running over the station, and in these I noticed two huge engine-beams
slowly swinging.
Shortly after this I became aware of the fact that this piece of the depôt
had gone adrift, and was, calmly and without any perceptible motion, carrying
our train and the two others across the river to the depôt on the Oakland
side.
I had been four and a half days in America and so I didn’t feel surprised. All
the same, it was sufficiently wonderful for admiration even there. I climbed
back into the car and enjoyed the sensation of travelling by rail and sea at the
same time, and then I got out again to see how the thing was done.
The piece of the Porta Costa station on which we were floating steered into
another station. The rails on the steam-driven platform were fitted on to other
rails on terra firma; the engine-bell clanged; the whistle tooted in its soft,
melodious way; and the Overland Limited steamed from sea to land in the
most commonplace fashion possible.
The next stop was at Oakland, on the eastern shore of the bay. Opposite
glittered the lights of the Golden City. Here we detrained, and, having crossed
on the biggest ferry in the world, we embarked on the biggest ferry-boat in
the world—California, like the rest of the States, is great on big things—and
an hour or so later I found myself installed at the Palace Hotel, which is also
believed by all good Californians to be the biggest hotel in the world.

III
THE QUEEN OF THE GOLDEN STATE

(From a Guide-book—with Annotations and an Impression of Chinatown)

“Serene, indifferent to Fate,

Thou sittest at the Western Gate.”

San Francisco—no well-bred American, unless he comes from Chicago, ever

says ’Frisco—is a delicious combination of wealth and wickedness, splendour
and squalor, vice, virtue, villainy, beauty, ugliness, solitude and silence, rush
and row—in short, San Francisco is just San Francisco, and that’s all there is
to it, as they say there. It was discovered and settled by Franciscan friars. It
would be no place for them now.
It is also quite a considerable city as to size. This is what the local guide-
book says:
“It is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean, on the north by Golden
Gate Strait and the Bay of San Francisco, on the east by the bay, and on the
south by San Mateo County.”
One would naturally expect a city bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean
to have a considerable water frontage, some nine thousand miles, in fact.
This, however, is not quite the case; it is only the American guide-booker’s
way of putting it.
As a matter of fact, San Francisco is a most picturesque city of some three
hundred thousand inhabitants, and it is spread over the bay shore and the
adjacent hills to the extent of about twenty-seven thousand acres. It is the
eighth city in size in the United States, and the third in commercial rank, but it
is not jealous either of New York or Chicago. It is the capital of God’s country,
and with that it is modestly content. A page advertisement of a magazine in
the guide-book begins with the query:
“Are you interested in God’s country?”
 It doesn’t quite say Heaven, but the implied analogy is obvious.
Still, even San Francisco has to keep its end up, and it is just a little sore on
the subject of earthquakes.
“These,” says my guide-booker, “are of rare occurrence. For the past half
century there are not known to have been more than half a dozen lives lost
from the effects of earthquakes; while in the New England and Middle States
and in the Mississippi Valley hundreds are killed annually by sunstroke,
lightning, hurricanes, and tornadoes, in addition to the millions of dollars’
worth of property destroyed by tornadoes and blizzards.”
Down east they say that the drink and other things you get in the West do
all that these can do, and a bit over. This, of course, is mere jealousy; and to
this San Francisco is as serenely indifferent as she is of Fate.
She also seems to be indifferent to everything else. Even dollars. This
doesn’t sound true, but it is. The splendid recklessness of the Argonauts of
the fifties still glows in the blood of the true San Franciscan.
Quite a short time ago a man worth a couple of million dollars—a
comparative pauper in a place where they think nothing of paying three
millions for a house—gambled every cent he had on the success of a certain
more or less honest deal. A friend of his had interests the other way, and
dumped down more millions to block the deal. He blocked it. They met at
their club the evening after the smash, and conversed as follows:
“Well, how goes it?”
“D——d bad.”
“In that—deal?”
“Steal, I call it.”
“How much?”
“Whole caboodle! Want a janitor up yonder?”
“Janitor—no. I want a nervy man to come in with me. Come?”
“I’m there.”
And now those two men are piling up millions together instead of betting
them against each other. That’s San Francisco.
The Golden City is entered naturally enough by a Golden Gate. It is as
proud of its Golden Gate and bay as Sydney is of “our harbour,” and that is
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