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The worst is over. And the far, far worse looms up ahead. We must change direction. It's either a nuclear-free future or no future at all. The Nuclear Age is no geologic time division. It is an age we issued license. A license that we must rescind. For far too long we have been blinded by the bright promises of the Nuclear Age. Energy too cheap to meter. Peace guaranteed by the threat of mutual assured destruction. We embraced a sparkling, mad new world. What we ignored and continue to ignore are the lives made miserable by our perverse embrace. It's ecological rape that we are practicing; it's airconditioned ethnocide; it's nuclear neo-colonialism. The mining and milling of uranium, the testing of nuclear warheads, and the storage of radioactive wastes, forever takes place in regions remote from us. Around the world the front-line victims, those who are suffering and dying because of the atom's military and "peaceful" uses, are most usually indigenous peoples: the Cree, Urguren, Pitjantjatjara, Shoshone, Tuwiner, Navajo, Tschuktschen, Kokotha, Apache, Sami... Quite often, these are peoples who live in vital connection with the earth, who hunt and fish, grow crops and raise livestock. Their traditional lands are being destroyed by the radioactivity seeping from our cozy lifestyles. Each kilowatt of nuclear power silently meters the destruction of their cultures. We are next, or if not us, our children, or if not our children, our children's children and all coming generations.
Sixty years of nuclear madness has set into motion a terrible engine of perpetual destruction. All over the world, criticality events are gathering at the bottom of sealed cans, drums, tanks and bottles. No contaminated groundwater system can be restored. No clean-up technology can eliminate radionuclides or heavy metals from the earth. Winning the Cold War far outweighed worrying about the safe disposal of radioactive wastes. The Cold War's cold revenge: nuclear waste storage sites will have to be carefully monitored and maintained for tens of millennia longer than Homo sapiens have stalked this planet. We've passed along to the coming generations a mortgage claiming mega-billions.
We grew up being told that without nuclear power, mom's dishwasher would stop working and dad's workplace would start laying off. Voices in government, the military, and from the civil nuclear sector discredited advocates of a nuclear-free future as foes of progress and of state. Military scientists made the cynical claim that without nuclear testing, they could not guarantee the long-term safety of nuclear warheads. At the same time nuclear death yields were being optimized, scientific studies were being released certifying the negligible impact of nuclear testing on the environment. Daily, such propaganda is still being disseminated.
In the spirit of the World Uranium Hearing, the Nuclear-Free Future Award shall help break the conspiracy of disinformation which silences discussion and controls countless human fates and threatens all coming generations. It is time that those who champion the vision of a better future are brought into the public spotlight, their achievements honored. It is time that we join hands with these visionaries, men and women who believe in responsible ecological thinking and the enlightened utilization of safe technologies. It is time that the nuclear discussion be influenced positively, rather than merely negatively: those regular news releases throttling public interest by disclaiming radioactive leaks. For the sake of all future generations, it is time we stopped making the same old mistakes and began pressing for some fresh solutions.
The Nuclear-Free Future Award -- "the globe`s most prestigious anti-nuclear prize" (TAZ) -- shall annually honor individuals or organizations working within each of the following three categories: Solutions
Education
Resistance
The Nuclear-Free Future Award shall travel the globe. The inaugural event took place on 5 November 1998 in Salzburg, Austria, and was followed by ceremonies in Los Alamos, New Mexico (1999), Berlin (2000), Carnsore Point, Ireland (2001), St. Petersburg (2002), Munich (2003), Jaipur, India (2004), Oslo, Norway (2005), and Window Rock, Arizona (2006). This year on October 18th, at the invitation of the Salzburg state government, the Nuclear-Free Future Award will return to the storied Salzburg Residenz to celebrate its 10th anniversary ceremony. Each year an independent group of international scientific and judicial experts cull down the nominations to twelve, before passing them along to a prominent international jury that decides the recipient or recipients for each of the three categories. The Nuclear-Free Future Award organizers present an additional "Lifetime Achievement Award", an honor which enlists no prize of money. Jury members and advisors of the Nuclear-Free Future Award include:
The reputation of an award is a dynamic of both the award sum and the reputation of the prize jury members. At present, each of the three awards is outfitted with the sum of 10,000 US dollars. Because Award candidates are most usually idealists and activists struggling on shoe-string budgets, it is hoped that in the near future the Award will be connected with more money. You can help by taking part in the fund-raising campaign. Paris, 1869, as recounted in The Saturday Evening Post of 1951: At a dinner recorded in the Journal of the de Goncourt brothers, some of the famous scholars of the day were crystal gazing into the future of science. Pierre Berthelot, a renowned chemist, predicted that by 1969 "man would know of what the atom is constituted and would be able, at will, to moderate, extinguish and light up the sun as if it were a lamp." Claude Bernard, the greatest physiologist of the day, predicted a future in which "man would be so completely the master of organic law that he would create life in competition with God." To which the de Goncourt brothers added the postscript: "To all of this we raised no objection. But we have the feeling that when this time comes to science, God with His white beard will come down to earth swinging a bunch of keys, and will say to humanity, the way they say at five o'clock at the salon, 'Closing time gentlemen.'" Five o' clock is nearing. We must change direction. For the sake of all coming generations, the time has arrived to install the Nuclear-Free Age. --Craig Reishus |
