Book Reviews Zeileissen, Christian von. Der völkerrechtliche Schutz vor militärischen Angriffen auf Kernkraftwerke /Protection under International Law against Military Attacks on Nuclear Power Stations. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1997. Pp. 354, Index. DM 98; öS 715; sFr 89. Not long ago the International Court of Justice in The Hague was confronted with the question of whether or not the use of nuclear weapons is lawful under international law. The advisory opinion of the ICJ, given on 8 July 1996, is somewhat ambiguous and does not present a clear answer to the question. Related to the debate on the legitimate use of nuclear weapons, although not mentioned in the volume discussed here, is the question of whether nuclear power stations could be lawfully attacked under humanitarian law, given that such action could have the same effects on the surrounding civilian population as the deployment of a nuclear bomb. In this book, which contains an extensive summary in English, Zeileissen presents a thorough discussion of the legitimacy of an attack on nuclear power stations under humanitarian law, both customary and conventional. The emphasis of the book is on the protection under Protocol I (1977), namely Article 56, which prohibits attacks on nuclear electricity generating stations in general. Yet Zeileissen specifies the exceptions: as a military object a nuclear power station is a legitimate target if (1) a nuclear catastrophe similar to the one the world experienced in Tschernobyl in 1986 can be excluded [the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe or … avoided] and (2) if this power station is of qualified military importance. This second condition can be problematic as the armed forces do not depend on civil power stations but generate their own electricity. A civil nuclear power station can therefore only be of military importance in an indirect way, if for example it supplies the armaments industry with electricity. To legitimize an attack on a nuclear power station it would not be enough that this station contributes to an integrated distribution grid, it must contribute significantly to the armaments industry, where this support could only be terminated by means of a military attack. Apart from specific passages like the example given, the book provides a general background to the development of humanitarian law and gives a useful summary of customary humanitarian law, particularly in the first part. It may as such serve as a general scheme of how to test the legitimacy of any military action in an armed conflict. It may even help to answer the question of whether, or under what circumstances, the use of nuclear weapons may be legitimate under customary humanitarian law. Christoph J.M. Safferling Munich
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