The issue of nuclear energy is a difficult one. The industry and its government supporters are aggressively making the case for global expansion of nuclear energy as an answer to global warming. But a compelling argument has been made against taking the nuclear path on both environmental and economic grounds. While today there is certainly a legal right to develop nuclear energy — NPT Article IV calls it an “inalienable right” without explaining why — that does not necessarily make it the right thing to do. IPPNW’s International Council passed a resolution in 1999 opposing nuclear energy not only because of its unavoidable links to nuclear weapons development, but also because of the inherent health and environmental dangers made manifest by Chernobyl. At both the 2007 and the 2008 NPT PrepComs, IPPNW joined other NGOs in calling for an International Sustainable Energy Agency that would channel global investments into clean, safe, renewable forms of energy that can meet the real need for economic development in the global south while ending our reliance on both fossil fuels and nuclear energy.

So we should think about staging similiar “Model Nuclear Weapons Convention Negotiations.” These, too, could serve as a powerful tool for engaging the young — not just in the goal of abolition, but in strategies and tactics for making abolition happen.