Statement of Mission

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.

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. 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.

The wish for a planet freed of nuclear contamination must remain a wish – the radioactive inheritance we have already gutted from the earth is doomed to accompany the next few thousand generations. This toxic legacy, so uncritically massed, was the central theme of the World Uranium Hearing held in Salzburg during 1992. At the historic Salzburg gathering, the testimonies of victims from every continent made plain the deadly dangers radiated by uranium mining and the disposal of nuclear wastes. The speakers – most usually indigenous peoples, their lands laced with toxic heavy metals, radium, thorium – felt as if they were victims of an undeclared nuclear war.

The weeklong Salzburg encounter launched the idea of the Nuclear-Free Future Award. Taken directly from the Declaration of Salzburg (UN-Document File# E/CN.4/Sub.2/AC.4/1994/7 6 June 1994), our central message is: URANIUM AND OTHER RADIOACTIVE MINERALS MUST REMAIN IN THEIR NATURAL LOCATION.

Mushroom cloud fig leaf (USA, 1946) Photo: Las Vegas News Bureau

Cyclops born near nuclear testing grounds (Kasachstan 1990), Photo: R. del Tredici

The Nuclear-Free Future Award – "the globe`s most prestigious anti-nuclear prize" (TAZ) – honors people, communities, or initiatives which:

• help thwart the spread of nuclear technology, whether it be the so-called "peaceful use of the atom," or its military exploit (Resistance);
• help develop viable alternative energy strategies or technologies (Solutions);
• help bring to light – despite the disinformation disseminated daily by politicians, scientists, and the spokespeople of the nuclear industry – the fatal consequences of plying the atom of its dark energies (Education).

The Nuclear-Free Future Award honors activists who are struggling to make the world livable for the coming generations. Calling the visionaries and architects of a nuclear-free future out of the shadows, the Award thanks these people while they are engaged in their work, helps effectuate their achievement, instead of waiting to honor them, graced by hindsight, some thirty or forty years later.

Eligible of Award nomination is any person, group or organization (regardless of legal status in its homeland) who or which is working – be it via alternative solutions, resistance or education – to make the future nuclear-free. Eligible of making an Award nomination is every last living person on the planet.

Each of the three annual awards is outfitted with a money prize of at least 10,000 American Dollars. This money will be passed along to support the recipient's work. The Munich offices of the Nuclear-Free Future Award reserve the option to give out further honorary awards (unoutfitted with money prizes).

The Nuclear-Free Future Award travels 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), Window Rock, Arizona (2006), and last year on October 18th, at the invitation of the Salzburg state government, we returned to the Salzburg Residenz to celebrate our 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:

• Ann Bancroft explorer, jury member, Minnesota
• Till Bastian, physician and author, jury member, Germany
• Rosalie Bertell, environmental epidemiologist, jury member, Canada
• Angela Davis, philosopher and civil rights activist, advisor, California
• Susan Dürr, peace activist, jury member, Munich
• Johan Galtung, peace researcher, jury member, Oslo
• Monika Griefahn, politician, jury member, Hannover
• Karl Grossman, journalist, jury member, BRD/India
• Vanamali Gunturu, philosopher, jury member, USA
• Arlo Guthrie, musician, advisor, Massachusetts
• Val Kilmer, actor, jury member, New Mexico
• Alfred Korblein physicist, jury member, München
• Corinne Kumar, Generalsektretärin, jury member, Tunis
• Winona LaDuke, author and activist, advisor, Anishinabe Nation
• Rudolf zur Lippe, philosopher, jury member, Deutschland
• Oren Lyons, educator, jury member, Onondaga Nation Chief
• Tsewang Norbu, Heinrich Böll Stiftung, jury member, Berlin
• John Otronto, peace activist, jury member, BRD/USA
• Eva Quistorp, peace activist, advisor, Berlin
• Kirkpatrick Sale, author and environmental thinker, jury member, New York
• Galsan Tschinag, author, jury member, Ulan Bator
• Frank Uhe, Director IPPNW-Germany, jury member, Berlin
• Christine von Weizsäcker, science critic, jury member, Bonn
• Joseph Weizenbaum, social critic, jury member, Berlin/Cambridge
• Howard Zinn, historian, jury member, Massachusetts

The Nuclear-Free Future Award organizers work hand-in-hand with environmental groups and foundations worldwide. Such partnerships range from pacts of solidarity to contractually binding agreements. In Germany our official affiliate is IPPNW of Berlin; in America, the Seventh Generation Fund of Hoopa, California.

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