The Nuclear-Free Future Award by Craig Reishus

Announcing the 2008
Nuclear-Free Future
Award Recipients:

Jillian Marsh of the Adnyamathanha Clan, Austrailia

Manuel Pino of the Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico, USA

Press Release
Press Photos
2008 Award Brochure

The Nuclear Age
was begun by humankind.
By humankind it must be ended.

Yes, we can do something about the toxic mess radiating from the Nuclear Age –

mega-complex technologies inviting human error, natural calamity, or terrorist madness;
the patent science fiction of a final radioactive waste repository;
the cultural ethnocide perpetrated on indigenous peoples by contaminating their homelands wih radiation;
nuclear arsenals packing ad absurdum overkill

– we can join together and celebrate the achievements of the architects of the Nuclear-Free Age, visionaries who have committed their lives to consigning the 'peaceful' and military uses of the atom to the junk heap of history.

Since 1998 the Nuclear-Free Future Award has annually honored individuals and initiatives working to make the world livable for the coming generations. We help facilitate the on-going work of:

indigenous activists struggling to end the destruction of their traditional lands;
scientists and journalists investigating the toxic consequences of radiation;
jurists who defend victims of the nuclear industry;
initiatives and communities working to solve our energy problems through the enlightened use of sustainable fuels;
politicians advocating nuclear disarmament and/or the end of nuclear power.

To bring these pioneering spirits into the public spotlight is to help them engineer our rescue. The Tibetans say that it is better to light a candle in the gloom than to complain about the darkness. That's a way of seeing things we share. And you? Help us help those who are striving to find a peaceful, sustainable way to keep the lights from going out. Invest in a future with the plug pulled on old-fashioned nuclear power and nuclear weapons pounded into plowshares. Invest in the Nuclear-Free Age.

Our column for Craig and guests The German Elections

28SEPT'09–The Germans went to the polls in record lows and voted more than ever for special interest parties. The big winners were the pro-pocketbook Free Democrat Party (FDP), the reformed communist The Left party, and the environmentalist Greens.

The two traditional Volksparteien, the CDU with its Bavarian sister CSU, and the SPD, received only 58% of the vote. Compare that percentage to 78% in 2001, 82% in 1987, and over 90% in 1972.

Commentators called the election results, 'historic.' Angela Merkel, the German chancellor famous for her gift of non-expression, glossed over any historicism by grinning into cameras exactly as accustomed. Her message being: read my lip gloss.

Brüchige Brückentechnologie
Chancellor Merkel, a DDR-degreed physicist, is nuclear power pro-nostalgic. The CDU platform paper calls it a 'Brückentechnologie' (bridging technology). Her new coalition partner, the FDP, uses a slightly different term: 'Übergangstechnologie' (transition technology).

Both words mean this: the German nuclear phase-out implemented by Gerhard Schroeder's SPD-led government will be pushed-back, reactor licenses extended beyond the law's 2021 cut-off.

Another important legacy of the Schroeder SPD/Green coalition government is the Renewable Energy Sources Act. This key law, authored by Nuclear-Free Future Award recipient Hans-Josef Fell, obliges grid operators to pay fixed feed-in tariffs for electricity won from renewable sources.

This lucky law has gained popularity all across the German political spectrum – even the FDP has come to see its far-reaching importance: fixed feed-in tariffs, creating thousands of Green jobs, have helped Germany become the world's first address in wind technology.

Still, using the recovering economy as an excuse, the Merkel-Westerwelle government will short-sightedly shorten renewable energy subsidies, particularly to solar power, which runs on panels 'Made in China.'

The happy fallout of Germany's change of power is Guido Westerwelle's – the first openly gay leader of a mainstream German party (FDP) – insistence that the USA remove its last nuclear warheads from German soil. Westerwelle is Merkel's foreign minister shoe-in.

--Craig Reishus