April 2011

NFFA laureates 2011 announced

The RESISTANCE award goes to the two Russian activists Nadezhda Lvovna Kutepova und Natalia Manzurova. Both of them belong to the organisation "Planeta Nadezhd" (Planet of Hope) which is active in a contaminated and forgotten region south of Moscow, where people have been dying from various types of cancer after a fatal accident in a nuclear weapons production site in 1957. The region is named Majak after its capital and is continously hushed up by the Russian government. Natalia Manzurova was a liquidator in Chernobyl. "We need them and they need us", says NFFA juror Christine von Weizsäcker.

Nadezhda Lvovna Kutepova	Natalia Manzurova

The EDUCATION award is shared by the ZDF German television journalists Barbara Dickmann und Angelica Fell. They are honoured for their ongoing educational and investigative work in the area of nuclear energy.

Barbara Dickmann	Angelica Fell

The 2011 recipient of the SOLUTIONS award is the physicist Hans Grassmann, who left the high spheres of physics (he was a co-worker of Nobel price recipient Carlo Rubbia and member of the CERN staff) to create simple solutions for our energy demand. His linear mirrors are of great interest in China at the moment. Hans Grassmann teaches at the University of Udine, Italy.

The Austrian activist Heinz Stockinger and the Australian physician Helen Caldicott are honoured for their LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT. Both of them are famous and respected members of the anti–nuclear movement.

Heinz Stockinger	Helen Caldicott

More pictures and information on all laureates will be published soon on our website. If you`d like to attend the official award ceremony on April 10th in Berlin, please check our event calendar.

April 2011

Nuclear Free Future Award Ceremony 2011 held in the Urania Berlin, Germany on April 10th

Since 1998 the Nuclear-Free Future Award has honored and helped facilitate the on-going work of individuals and initiatives struggling to undo this mad juncture of time for the sake of the coming generations.Our central message: leave the uranium in the earth ! Our laureates are heroes and heroines working to pull the plug on nuclear power, or to pound nuclear warheads into plowshares. Many are the visionaries and architects of a future lived in sustainable harmony with the earth, men and women energetically seeding fresh solutions. This years ceremony will be held in April to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl catastrophy. It is embedded in IPPNW`s (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) international congress on Chernobyl (April 8-10). The laureates will be announced at the beginning of March.
Unfortunately the program is only available in german. If you are interested in attending the ceremony please contact us (info@nuclear-free.com).

February 2011

2008 NFFA laureate Jillian Marsh

Jillian Marsh's Doctoral Thesis
Awarded Recognition at
the University of Adelaide

"I dedicate this thesis to the peaceful movements of people on a global scale who truly believe our world will be a better place when it becomes decolonised and nuclear free. Decolonisation of our minds and our daily lives provides a peaceful strategy that every individual person can nurture and utilise toward a solution for global peace and a cleaner, sustainable environment. The threat of a nuclear holocaust is real for all global citizens, and responsible leadership alone cannot guarantee our children and their children a safe presence on this Earth if uranium continues to be extracted and marketed on a global scale. Ordinary citizens of every nation must act to ensure a safe environment for our children"... (More)

February 2011

2002 NFFA laureate Ole Kopreitan dies at 73

JAN 24'11, OSLO–He was perhaps best known for pushing a cart laden with buttons advocating a ban on nuclear weapons and other political causes, but Ole Kopreitan was much more than a fixture on Oslo's main boulevard, Karl Johans Gate. He was a committed and award-winning peace activist. More from Views and News from Norway

November 2010

Tadatoshi Akiba, 2007 Nuclear-Free Future Aware Laureate

Over half of world capital cities
join campaign to eliminate
nuclear arms by 2020

NOV.1'10, HIROSHIMA– Mayors for Peace announced today that 94 new member cities have joined during the month of October. With Guatemala City, Reykjavik and Yerevan, Mayors for Peace welcomes three capital cities in its global network campaigning for the immediate commencement of negotiations for the establishment of a nuclear weapon free world by 2020. Mayors for Peace now counts 4,301 members in 149 countries and regions. More...

October 2010

Hermann Scheer (1944-2010):
German Lawmaker, Leading Advocate for Solar Energy and "Hero for the Green Century"
in One of His Final Interviews

OCT.15'10 (From Amy Goodman at DemocracyNow!) – Hermann Scheer, one of the world's leading advocates for solar power, has died at the age of sixty-six. The German economist and politician helped make Germany a renewable energy powerhouse and inspired many across the world to expand the use of solar power. Scheer had been member of the German Parliament for three decades and was the president of EUROSOLAR, the European Association for Renewable Energy. In 1999, he won the Right Livelihood Award for his "indefatigable work for the promotion of solar energy worldwide." When he received the award, he described solar energy as the energy of the people. We met up with Herman Scheer last month in Bonn, Germany, for what turned out to be one of his final interviews.

September 2010

Photos from the NYC Award Ceremony

2010 Nuclear-Free Future Award laureates, musicians and event organizers at the Great Hall of Cooper Union © Orla Connolly

Encore! A second helping...

September 2010

2010 NUCLEAR-FREE FUTURE AWARD LAUREATES

RESISTANCE: The African Uranium Alliance
Visionaries from Niger, Tansania, Namibia, Malawiu, Cameroon and South Africa stand up and say No to uranium mining.

EDUCATION: Oleg Bodrov
A Russian scientist struggles against the nuclear mainstream.

SOLUTIONS: Bruno Barrillot
A French activist is the driving force behind a law providing some measure of compensation to the victims of French nuclear testing in the South Pacific.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT: Martin Sheen
A noted Hollywood actor raises anti-nuclear consciousness. "I act to earn my living, I do this to stay alive."

SPECIAL RECOGNITION: Henry Red Cloud
Henry Red Cloud is a driving force behind solar-energy across Indian country. His great-great-great Grandfather, Chief Red Cloud, was the first Native American to speak at the Great Hall of Cooper Union. A circle completes.

Statement of the Pre-Congress 'Sacred Land, Poisoned Peoples'
to the 19th IPPNW World Congress

The Statement of the Pre-Congress 'Sacred Land, Poisoned Peoples' to the 19th IPPNW World Congress was read by Charmaine White Face (USA) and Rebecca Wingfield-Bear (Australia) to the Closing Plenary, August 29, 2010, at the University of Basel, in Basel, Switzerland.

See also: IPPNW call for appropriate measures to ban uranium mining worldwide.

September 2010

August 2010

Tadatoshi Akiba, Nuclear-Free Future Award Laureate 2007

Hiroshima's Peace Declaration 2010

6AUG'10–"In the company of hibakusha who, on this day 65 years ago, were hurled, without understanding why, into a "hell" beyond their most terrifying nightmares and yet somehow managed to survive; together with the many souls that fell victim to unwarranted death, we greet this Aug. 6 with re-energized determination that, "No one else should ever have to suffer such horror" (more from Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba)...

Gordon Edwards, Nuclear-Free Future Award Laureate 2006

Dr. Gordon Edwards on Russian Wildfires and the Potential Spread of Radioactivity.

10AUG'10–Dr. Gordon Edwards talks about the prospect of Russian flames reviving Chernobyl's radioactive wrath. The interview was broadcast on yesterday's edition of The Link, Radio Canada International. You can download or listen to it here.

July, 2010

Gordon Edwards, Nuclear-Free Future Award Laureate 2006

Critics slam proposal to ship nuclear waste through Lake Ontario

18JUL'10–The Bruce Nuclear Generating Station plans to ship 1,760 tonnes of radiation-laced steel through Lake Ontario – a precedent-setting project that has officials worried on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border.

The decommissioned generators, which are more than 30 years old and being replaced as part of a refurbishment project at the Bruce plant, are currently housed in a concrete warehouse. Workers are allowed near them for only short periods of time due to their radioactivity.

Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, a watchdog group, says each generator contains thousands of small tubes through which the primary coolant flows. Those tubes have the same type of contamination that all the other pipes in the primary cooling system have – fission products that emit beta and gamma radiation and transuranic elements such as plutonium, which emit alpha radiation. "They are harmless inside the steam generator, but once outside in the environment they are very dangerous and remain so for a very long time," says Edwards. More from thestar.com...

June, 2010

Choosing a Nuclear Freer Future

A conversation between Claus Biegert and Colin Goedecke
about the surprising realities and costs of nuclear energy.
Choosing a Nuclear Freer Future is the 21st in a series of thought pieces
conducted by Colin to help us think, act and communicate in wiser ways.
Others can be found at www.tenowls.blogspot.com

If nuclear energy is infallible,
the Pope is fail-safe.

21JUN'10, OBERAMMERGAU–This is the year of the Passion Play. In real life, Jesus is a psychologist, and Mary Magdalene a flight attendent. In real life they're lovers. And over at Dorfstrasse 15 artist Elisabeth Endres, a long-time supporter of the NFFA, displays her real-life interpretation of the Lord's gospel. So far no comment from the Passion Play organizers. This much is certain: the artist's statement "Splitting the Atom – Jesus would have been against it", stands in crass contradiction to the Vatican's nuclear energy make-believe.

May, 2010

Yvonne Margarula, Nuclear-Free Future Award Laureate 1998

Kakadu being poisoned by Rio Tinto mine

SYDNEY,24MAY–Millions of litres of radioactive water from the Ranger uranium mine have flowed into world heritage-listed wetlands in Kakadu National Park.

Aboriginal traditional owners say they will oppose plans for a huge expansion of the 30-year-old mine by Energy Resources of Australia unless the company upgrades its environmental protection procedures.

The Rio Tinto-owned company has attempted to downplay an unexplained spike in contaminated water flowing from the mine into Kakadu's Magela Creek between April 9 and 11, the Herald can reveal. More from LINDSAY MURDOCH in the Sydney Morning Herald...

Mordechai Vanunu, Nuclear-Free Future Award Laureate 2002

'Shame on you, democracy,' Vanunu yells as he returns to prison

23. Mai 2010 –After having served 18 years for leaking Israeli nuclear secrets, Mordechai Vanunu begins serving additional 3 months for violating terms of his parole. More from Nir Hasson, HAARETZ.COM...

Alexei Yablokov, Nuclear-Free Future Award Laureate 2002

CHERNOBYL: CONSEQUENCES OF THE CATASTROPHE FOR PEOPLE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment is written by Alexey Yablokov, Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko. 'This book is in contrast to findings by the World Health Organization, International Atomic energy Agency and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation who based their findings on some 300 western research papers, and who found little of concern about the fallout from Chernobyl. They are leaving out the findings of some 30,000 scientific papers prepared by scientists working and living in the stricken territories and suffering the everyday problems of residential contamination with nuclear debris and a contaminated food supply. More from ens-newswire...

Or take a look at the book...

Souad Naji Al-Azzawi, Nuclear-Free Future Award Laureate 2003

Violations Of Iraqi Children Rights
Under The American Occupation

Sun Xiaodi, Nuclear-Free Future Award Laureate 2006

Did you know that in China,
people who know too much
undergo reeducation through labor?

Free Sun Xiaodi !  After publically decrying the radioactive mayhem of Uranium Mine 792 officials/salvage handlers in collusion with government authorities, both the environmental activist and his daughter Sun Haiyan were banished to labor camps for reeducation. More from Human Rights in China (HRIC).