Nuclear-Free Future Award

Since 1998 the Nuclear-Free Future Award (NFFA) is an award given to anti-nuclear activists, organizations and communities. The Award annually honours the architects of a nuclear-free planet. The 2012 Nuclear-Free Future Award Recipients come from Japan, France, Germany, Portugal, and Switzerland.

This year, the NFFA international jury of activists and scientists has selected as Award recipients in the categories of Resistance, Education, and Solutions (three prizes totaling $30,000) the following nominees:

Resistance: Gabriela Tsukamoto and MUNN
Up until 1991, Portugal with its sixty-two uranium mines was one of the world's most important suppliers of nuclear fuel. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima contained uranium from Portugal. Today, the specter of uranium mining returns. Gabriela Tsukamoto, the mayor of the small town of Nisa, and the initiative Movimento Urânio em Nisa Não, are firmly opposed to plans to restart uranium mining, reminding people of the dire health and environmental consequences. Portugal rejoins the international anti-nuclear movement.

Education: Katsumi Furitsu 
This Japanese physician from Osaka is a longtime member of IPPNW (Inter-national Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War/Physicians for Social Responsibility); she has shared her expertise at many nuclear crisis hot-spots around the world. In the aftermath of Fukushima she assured the flow of uncensored news to the world press. Unlike many of her colleagues at IPPNW-Japan, alongside the threat of nuclear warheads, Dr. Furitsu has for the past thirty years also warned of the perils of nuclear power. She was nominated by the Alternative Nobel Prize laureate Rosalie Bertell, who passed away last June 14th.

Solutions: Yves Marignac 
Yves Marignac is widely acknowledged as the leading independent energy consultant in France. With his expertise he leads the non-profit organization WISE-Paris (World Information Service on Energy). He is co-author of the manifesto NégaWatt, a work that outlines the steps needed to turn France into a nuclear-free nation.

The Nuclear-Free Future Award will also bestow two honorary Awards:

Lifetime achievement: Sebastian Pflugbeil
The physicist and former East German civil rights activist is a long-time atomic detective: for decades he has been a source of dependable data, filtering out the lies and laundered statistics of the nuclear industry. Sebastian Pflugbeil is President of the Gesellschaft fuer Strahlenschutz ("Society for Radiation Protection"), founded in 1991, and the chief editor at Strahlen-Telex. 

Special recognition: Susan Boos Editor-in-chief at the Swiss weekly WOZ, Susan Boos is one of the few reliable authorities on nuclear energy in the European media world. Her most recent work, Fukushima lässt grüßen ("Fukushima Sends Greetings"), publis-hed by Rotpunktverlag, has won great acclaim. 

The 2012 Awards Ceremony, hosted by Verein Dunant2010Plus in coopera-tion with IPPNW Switzerland, will take place on 29 September 2012 in Heiden, Switzerland.

Source and contact: www.nuclear-free. com

Front-line anti-nuclear visionaries from Russia, Africa, France and the U.S. are to receive a unique, world leading award, and expose hidden truths about widespread human and environmental destruction by the nuclear industry.

At its root, the use of nuclear energy violates human rights by devastating the lives and homelands of indigenous people around the world. Uranium mining and processing and its toxic waste products are and have for decades been the direct cause of radioactive contamination, and implicated in various cancers and other debilitating diseases; Chernobyl-style accidents aside. It's an unsustainable and unconscionable situation when only 2.5% of the world's total energy comes from nuclear sources. Yet few people understand or ever question where nuclear energy comes from.

The Nuclear-Free Future Awards will honor five 'non-nuclear' champions.

• The African Uranium Alliance: Visionaries from Niger, Tanzania, Namibia, Malawi, Cameroon and South Africa stand up and say No to uranium mining,
• Oleg Bodrov: A Russian scientist goes against the nuclear mainstream,
• Bruno Barrillot: one activist in France is the father of a nuclear testing victim compensation law,
• Martin Sheen: A noted Hollywood actor raises anti-nuclear consciousness,
• Henry Red Cloud: A bison farmer and promoter of solar energy. He is the fifth generation grandson of a famous Oglala-Lakota Chief Red Cloud, who, in 1870, was the first Native American to speak at the Great Hall of Cooper Union.

A circle of history will close.
Three laureates will receive US$10,000 (8,000 euro) each to carry on their efforts' and will tell their front-line stories to the audience in Cooper Union's Great Hall September 30th at 7 p.m. and to podcast listeners tuning in from around the world. Co-founder Claus Biegert says about the upcoming event: "We want and deserve a world that's safe and sustainable. The heroic people we recognize this and each year with our Award are spreading the true story and leading the way to this much wiser future. It's time to cut through the politics; take personal responsibility; and tell our leaders this nuclear state of affairs that sacrifices so many innocent lives and precious parts of our natural world is unacceptable."

Founded in 1998, and based in Munich, Germany, the Nuclear-Free Future Award (NFFA) provides vital recognition and financial and moral support for individuals, organizations and communities around the world working valiantly to achieve a peaceful, unharmful future free of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons and uranium mining. An independent, non-profit group, the NFFA works closely with The Alternative Nobel Prize among others, and has been called by Berlin newspaper taz "the most  important antinuclear award in the world." Each year's laureates, from grass-roots activists to enlightened politicians, are selected by an international jury.

Source and contact: The Nuclear-Free Future Award, Ganghoferstr. 52, 80339 München, Germany.
Tel: +49 89-28659714
Email: info@nuclear-free.com
Web: www.nuclear-free.com