Last Thursday morning, I had an interesting session at the court in Den Bosch.

Last Thursday morning, I had an interesting hearing at the court in Den Bosch.

Last Thursday morning, I had an interesting session at the court in Den Bosch.

It was about nuclear fusion. You mimic the energy production of the sun. Under high pressure and heat, atoms fuse together, resulting in a significant amount of energy. The advantages of this are:

-Almost no dangerous nuclear waste like in nuclear fission (nuclear energy);
-A lot of energy from fuel that is relatively easy to obtain (hydrogen-like substances).
-Much safer: if something goes wrong, the reaction usually stops by itself.
-No CO₂ emissions during energy production.

If this is further developed, it would be a much cleaner form of energy than nuclear energy.

This case involved a very large European tender project where the other party was to produce high head flux components for the fusion reactor. My client was the foreign main contractor of the project, and the other party a subcontractor from the Netherlands. The other party failed to produce the HHF components. The question was whether the parties had entered into a result obligation or merely an obligation of effort.

In the preliminary ruling, the judge stated that a result needed to be delivered, and not just an effort... The judge did find that the other party was not in default as they had not been formally notified of any breach. Our client claims that they were indeed in default and unable to deliver a functional product according to the technical specifications that were included in the tender. They had attempted this and after 19 attempts/iterations still had not succeeded.

The case is now awaiting judgment. Now it remains to be seen what the outcome will be.

#nuclearfusion #cleanerworld