The Nuclear Free Future Award

Since 1998, the Nuclear-Free Future Award has honored people worldwide who are working for a future free of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The award ceremonies, which will take place annually at different locations until 2018, demonstrate the size and diversity of the global anti-nuclear movement. The Nuclear Free Future Foundation has decided to dedicate itself primarily to educational work with the Uranium Atlas. Since 2023, the NFFA has been continued in cooperation with co-founder Claus Biegert, Beyond Nuclear (USA) and IPPNW Germany. Click here for the new website

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  • Ceremonies
  • 21
  • Award
  • 108
  • Countries
  • 30

 

The categories

The Nuclear-Free Future Award is presented in five categories.

In recent years, the first three categories have been endowed with prize money of 5000 US dollars each: RESISTANCE, EDUCATION, SOLUTION.

The two honorary awards LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT and SPECIAL RECOGNITION highlight special achievements of active personalities of the worldwide anti-nuclear movement. They do not go through the same voting process of the international jury as the candidates of the first three categories, but their selection is the result of intensive discussions with our staff and partners in the respective venues.

The Jury

2022 Jury Members:

Oleg Bodrov

Russia

President of the Public Council of the South Coast of the Gulf of Finland. He used to head the NGO Green World, but had to give up the leadership because he was classified as a foreign agent due to his criticism. In 2010, he was awarded the Nuclear Free Future Award. Jury member since 2022.

Makoma Lekalakala

South Africa

Director of Earthlife Africa Johannesburg, an environmental justice and anti-nuclear organization. Through her advocacy, civil society won the first South African climate change court case against the government and the nuclear agreement between the South African and Russian governments was reversed. Awards: 2017 WWF Living Awards Honourable Mention, 2018 Goldman Environmental Prize for Africa, 2018 Nick Steel Environmentalist of the Year. Jury member since 2022.

Xanthe Hall

Germany

Has worked at IPPNW since the 1990s and became co-founder of ICAN Germany in 2014. Jury member since 2016.

Linda Pentz Gunter

USA

Founded Beyond Nuclear in July 2007, she writes for and edits the Beyond Nuclear International website. Most recently, she was editor of the English edition of The Uranium Atlas. Formerly a journalist from the United Kingdom, she is nearly fluent in Italian and French and conversant in German and Spanish.

Former Jury Members:

Michael Asch, Canada
Ann Bancroft, USA
Dr. Till Bastian, Germany
Angela Davis, USA
Sue Dürr, Germany/USA
Johan Galtung, Norway
Dr. Rainer Grießhammer, Germany
Karl Grossmann, USA
Vanamali Gunturu, India
Alfred Körblein, Deutschland
Corinne Kumar, India
Rudolf zur Lippe, Germany
John Otranto, USA
Eva Quistorp, Germany
Kirkpatrick Sale, USA
Robert Venables, USA
Alyn Ware, United Kingdom
Paul Walker, USA
Milo Yellowhair, USA
Dave Sweeney, Australia

Awards 2020

Phil Harrison, USA

2006 in Window Rock

Phil Harrison reported in 1992 at the World Uranium Hearing in Salzburg on the cancer death of his father at the age of 43, who wore neither mouthguards nor gloves in the unventilated uranium mines. Lung cancer, silicosis, leukemia and skin cancer became the miners' diseases. He wants recognition and reparation for the human sacrifices his people have made for the nuclear industry. He was honoured with a special recognition.

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All awards

Category Resistance

Kategorie Widerstand

Category RESISTANCE: Anthony Lyamunda, Tanzania

Anthony Lyamunda has been resisting the planned uranium mining and opening of uranium mines in his country for many years. "The Nuclear Free Future Award is intended to draw the attention of the world public to this problem," the jury said in its statement.

Read more …

2020 online

Fedor Maryasov and Andrey Talevlin, Russia

Extremist and foreign agent – these are the terms with which the Russian state power tries to discredit, criminalize and muzzle Fedor Maryasov and Andrey Talevlin. The journalist Maryasov defends in writing against the Russian nuclear state. The lawyer Talevlin represents the public and Russian NGOs against it.

2018 In Salzburg

Jeffrey Lee, Australia

Jeffrey Lee has put the protection of his country and his culture before personal profit. For years he rejected the offers of the Areva nuclear company to mine uranium in Koongarra. It is the traditional land of the Djok, over which he has clan chief control. Instead, he offered Koongarra to the Australian state, which integrated the land into the Kakadu National Park.

2017 In Basel

Almoustapha Alcahen, Niger

In 1978, Almoustapha Alhacen was employed by the Areva nuclear company as a worker in a uranium mill near Arlit. Because there were strange illnesses among colleagues and their wives and mysterious deaths of relatively young people, Alhacen founded a local NGO called Aghirin`man in 2002, in Tuareg language "Protection of the Soul", dedicated to research into uranium dangers.

2016 In Johannesburg

Arif Ali Cangi, Turkey

"Attorney for Life and Justice" is not a registered profession. And yet it would be the appropriate job title for Arif Ali Cangi, who has been a board member of a lawyers' association dealing with human rights issues, protection against torture and the rights of women, children and prisoners since 1995. He is committed to combating the illegal storage of nuclear waste and the construction of the Akkuyu nuclear power station.
 
2015 In Washington D.C.

Megan Rice, Michael R. Walli and Gregory I. Boertje-Obed, USA

On July 28, 2012 Megan Rice, then 82, together with Michael R. Walli (63) and Gregory I. Boertje-Obed (57), broke into a so-called "Y-12 Security Complex" in Oak Ridge, Tennessee: one of the tightly guarded places where the United States stores highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium. The three - all members of "Now Swords to Ploughshares" - sprayed peace slogans.

2014 In München

Golden Misabiko / DR Congo

Golden Misabiko had made public in 2000 that the Kabila government had eight alleged coupists executed without trial. In 2009, the president of ASADHO published a report on the government's involvement in illegal uranium mining at the decommissioned Shinkolobwe mine and exposed secret negotiations with the French nuclear power company AREVA.

2012 In Heiden

Gabriela Tsukamoto and Movimento Urânio em Nisa Não, Portugal

Mayor Gabriela Tsukamoto and the organisation MUNN (Movimento Urânio em Nisa Não) could succeed in sparing her home community of Nisa in Portugal the fate of so many uranium mining areas. Their resistance finds many comrades-in-arms because uranium was mined in the area until 1991 and former workers with cancer are still fighting for compensation.

2011 In Berlin

Nadezhda Kutepova and Natalia Manzurova, Russia

Nadezhda Kutepova co-founded the self-help organization Planeta Nadezhd in 1999. The main goal: to inform people in the "closed city" of Mayak about radiation doses and dangers as a result of the nuclear accident in 1957 and about their rights. Her comrade-in-arms, radiologist Natalia Manzurova, suffers from thyroid cancer. As a result of her liquidator mission in Chernobyl.

2010 in New York City

African Uranium Alliance, Africa

Resistance to uranium mining in Niger, Tanzania, Malawi, Namibia and South Africa was hardly noticed in the past. However, in November 2009, anti-uranium activists from the five states joined forces and formed the African Uranium Alliance. The main task of the alliance is, besides the resistance against new mines, the education of the workers in the old mines.

2008 in München

Jilian Marsh, Australia

As a member of the Australia Nuclear Free Alliance, Jilian Marsh is critically engaged in uranium mining. Her major achievements include her instrumental role in enforcing Native Title Legislation in the exploration and operation of the Beverley Uranium Mine. It states that traditional Aboriginal rights and claims are taken into account by Australian national law.

2008 in München

Manuel Pino, USA

The resistance to uranium mining shaped Manuel Pino's life. He grew up near the Jackpile-Paguate Mine, America's largest uranium ore mining day tree. He made the destructive impact of open pit uranium mining on Native American culture the subject of his dissertation and gave a loud voice to the victims of the uranium boom at the World Uranium Hearing and at many conferences.

2007 in Salzburg

Charmaine Whiteface and Defenders of the Black Hills, Lakota Nation, USA

In 2002, Charmaine White Face, an Oglala woman from the Pine Ridge reserve, founded the "Defenders of the Black Hills" organization with like-minded people. The extraction of uranium has led to a major radioactive contamination in the south and west of the mountains. To this day, the former boreholes, sinkholes and flood basins are waiting for remediation and provide increased radioactive contamination.

2006 in Windows Rock

Sun Xiaodi, China

There are rich uranium deposits in Gansu Province in western China. Sun Xiaodi worked on the site of uranium mine No. 792. In 1988 he began to ask questions – about illegal sales, the inadequate disposal of uranium remains, contamination and damage to health. Although he was fired in 1994, he filed petitions and gave interviews. He was imprisoned several times.

2005 in Oslo

Motarilavoa Hilda Lini, Vanuatu

Hilda Lini, sister of Vanuatu's Prime Minister Father Walter Lini and politically crossed with him for a few years, was a freedom fighter against the colonial powers and pioneer for women's rights during her student days. After her university career, she became the first minister of the island nation and in the South Pacific and an anchor woman for all those who want a nuclear-free future.

2004 in Jaipur

Jharkandis Organization against Radiation (JOAR), India

For decades, the Uranium Corporation of India Ltd has been mining uranium in Singhbhum District, Bihar State, and has been trying to expropriate and expel indigenous settlers, the "Adivasis" (first settlers). The JOAR, headed by Ghanshyam Birulee, opposes this. JOAR activists have been overwhelmed with lawsuits. Nolens volens they became experts in Indian litigation law.

2003 In München

Carol Gilbert, Jackie Hudson, Ardeth Plate, Space Plowshares II, USA

After George W. Bush called for the destruction of weapons of mass destruction, three Sisters of the Dominican Order gained access to a Minuteman III missile silo in northeastern Colorado on October 6, 2002. They painted a cross on the silo with their blood and hit the building with a hammer. "We just did what the president asked us to do," they said.

2002 In St. Petersburg

Mordechai Vanunu, Israel

Mordechai Vanunu was hired as a technician at the Dimona Research Center in the Negev Desert in 1976 and found that plutonium for nuclear weapons was produced deep underground. He begins to photograph in secret and gathers evidence that Israel has around 200 warheads, making it the sixth-largest nuclear power. In 1985 he leaves Dimona and makes his knowledge public.

2001In Carnsore Point

Kevin Buzzacott, Arabunna Nation/Australia

In the language of whites, it is civil courage, for him as an aboriginal simply a duty. He will never stop fighting against uranium mining in the land of his people, the Arabunna, even though he has been repeatedly arrested and imprisoned for it. On June 10, he embarks on a three-month, three-thousand-kilometre peace march along the ancient Aboriginal songlines to Sydney.

2000 in Berlin

Inverhuron and District Ratepayers Association (IDRA), Canada

In 1985, Canadian sheep farmer Eugene Bourgeois fell into a hydrogen sulphide cloud from an Ontario Hydro reactor. In the citizens' organization "Inverhuron and District Ratepayers Association (IDRA)" he found comrade-in-arms  and trained them as experts in hydrogen sulphide. Among other things, he found that 750,000 fuel rods should be stored above ground for at least 90 years.

1999 in Los Alamos

Dorothy Purley, USA

Dorothy Purley worked as a truck driver from 1975 to 1982 in the uranium mill of what was then the largest uranium opencast mine in the United States. She and many others were diagnosed with cancer. Dorothy Purley has since taken care of the claims of radiated victims, developed educational material for local schools, informed the tribal leaders of various Native American nations about long-term consequences.

1999 in Los Alamos

Grace Thorpe, USA (Kopie)

Grace Thorpe had learned that her tribe, the Sac and Fox Nation, and 16 other native American tribes were willing to bury high-level radioactive waste on their land for 100,000 US-Dollar. She blocked the deal and founded the National Enviromental Coalition of Native Americans to save reserves nationwide from the dumping lobby. More than seventy tribes have joined.

1998 in Salzburg

Yvonne Margarula, Australia

At the beginning of 1997, a fight against uranium mining began in Kakadu National Park: First, Yvonne Margarula managed to get the lease for the Jabiluka mining site annulled by the Federal Court of Justice. She then requested that Kakadu be declared a world heritage site by UNESCO. Finally, she allied herself with the Greens and students.

Category Education

Kategorie Aufklärung

Category EDUCATION: Libbe HaLevy, USA

Libbe HaLevy runs a weekly podcast about all things nuclear, Nuclear Hotseat. It's a real powerhouse, but she's able to bring in high-profile guests from around the world.
"Because the Nuclear Hotseat program is available online, many activists around the world can access information not normally available to them through the weekly podcast," judges the NFFF jury, "this is a very compelling offering."

Read more …

2020 online

Felice and Jack Cohen-Joppa, USA

There are people who risk everything to protest against nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Many are put on trial and thrown into prison for this. And then there are people who support the anti-nuclear opponents. Two people who have been active in this way for a lifetime are Felice and Jack Cohen Joppa. Until today, through their publishing and charity organization "The Nuclear Resister" they have documented more than 100,000 anti-nuclear and anti-war actions.

2018 in Salzburg

Karipbek Kuyukov, Kazakhstan

Karipbek Kuyukov dedicated his life and his art (stirring, hand-painted reminder pictures) to the goal that no one should suffer any more from the terrible consequences of nuclear weapons production and use. As part of the movement that brought about the end of underground bomb testing in the Soviet Union, he contributed to the closure of the atomic bomb test site in Kazakhstan in 1991. He has raised his voice against the possession, transfer and use of nuclear weapons.
2017 in Basel

Janine Allis-Smith u and Martin Grant Forwood, Great Britain

Much of what we now know about the Sellafield reprocessing plant in the North West of England is thanks to the two-person team CORE. Behind the acronym for Cumbrian's Opposed to a Radioactive Environment are Martin Forwood and Janine Allis-Smith. Since the mid-eighties, the couple have been uncovering and clearing up. Their son, like many of the region's children, was diagnosed with leukaemia.

2016 in Johannesburg

Brunot Chareyron, France

In 1993, at the age of 28, physicist Bruno Chareyron became head of the CRIIRAD scientific laboratory, which was founded in 1986 to obtain reliable data after the Chernobyl accident. Since then, Chareyron has travelled the world with his laboratory: around the uranium mines in Niger, in Chernobyl, but also in the uranium mines of France. And always in the service of the Enlightenment.

2015 in Washington D.C.

Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, Switzerland

The insect pictures by the Swiss artist and scientific illustrator Cornelia Hesse-Honegger document mutations in insects from the area around Leibstadt, Benzau, Gösgen, Creys-Malville, Sellafield, Stade, Krümmel, La Hague, Chernobyl and the nuclear test sites in Nevada. "Up to one insect in five was found to be physically damaged at the sites I examined."

2014 in Munich

Aileen Mioko Smith, Japan

Aileen Mioko Smith, chairperson of Green Action Kyoto, was instrumental in uncovering forged insurance documents that classified the loading of Fukushima reactors with plutonium mixed oxide fuel rods as safe. Because she repeatedly appeared in public as a revelator, she became a personalized center of resistance in Japan as early as the 1980s.

2012 in Heiden

Katsumi Furitsu, Japan

As a medical student in the eighties, Katsumi Furitsu had already learned about the radiation exposure to which nuclear power plant workers are exposed in normal Japanese operation. And early on she turned her attention to the ominous beginning of the nuclear chain: uranium mining. She took measurements to prove the excessiveness of the nuclear-industrial complex. And she was never intimidated.

2011 in Berlin

Barbara Dickmann and Angelica Fell, Germany

The ZDF journalists Barbara Dickmann and Angelica Fell prevented with their film "and nobody knows why" that the "cancer cluster" around the nuclear power plant Krümmel was trivialized.  They stuck to the topic, accompanying, among other things, a nationwide children's cancer study, which confirmed that the risk of contracting leukaemia before the 5th birthday is higher in the vicinity of nuclear power plants.
2010 in New York City

Oleg Bodrov, Russia

The physicist Oleg Bodrov has headed Russia's leading environmental organization Green World since 1999. He recognized early on that his fight against extending the operating life of old nuclear plants in Russia needed a "positive basis". This is why his commitment is also directed towards sustainable energy production. Wherever the government imposes silence, he relies on dialogue.

2007 in Salzburg

Siegwart-Horst Günther, Germany

In 1991, Professor Siegwart Horst Günther came across an unusually large number of deformed babies in Iraq and clinical pictures such as he had never seen before in this region: Günther suspected that tanks shot down with uranium ammunition were the main cause. He had a projectile picked up in the desert sand spectrographically examined in Berlin in 1992, which confirmed his suspicion.

2006 in Window Rock

Gordon Edwards, Canada

For decades, the mathematician Gordon Edwards has been one of Canada's leading figures in the anti-nuclear scene. He proved that the Canadian government's limits for radon gas were six times excessive and played a key role in a moratorium on a new reactor in Quebec. Effortlessly and with analytical accuracy he dismantles the myth of clean nuclear energy.

2004 in Jaipur

Asaf Durakociv, Canada

At the end of the 1990s, the radiologist and expert on radiation damage founded the Uranium Medical Research Center (UMCR) in Canada after he discovered depleted uranium and even plutonium in US soldiers suffering from the then mysterious "Gulf War Syndrome" - and was advised to conduct research in other directions. Since 2002, the UMCR has maintained two research teams in Afghanistan, among others.

2003 in Munich

Souad Naij Al-Azzawi, Iraq

The geologist Dr. Souad Naij Al-Azzawi completed her doctorate on the radioactive contamination of the groundwater in Colorado by nuclear power plants and returned to Iraq with this knowledge. In 1995/96, as head of the Department of Environmental Engineering at the University of Baghdad, she investigated the contamination of soil, water, air and agricultural products by ammunition hardened with depleted uranium.
 
2002 in St. Petersburg

Ole Kopreitan, Norway

The fact that Norway's parliament declared in 1975 that it would touch its future non-nuclear energy mix is due to the fierce grassroots resistance in the country and in particular to Ole Kopreitan. After this stage victory, he committed himself to the worldwide fight against military and commercial use of nuclear power, since 1980 as Secretary General of the organisation "Nei til Atomvåpen".

2001 in Carnsore Point

Kenji Higushi, Japan

Thanks to the documentary work of photographer Kenji Higushi, more and more attention is being paid to the victims of civil nuclear fission. His first of eight volumes of photographs to date (Exposed Workers Disappear in the Dark) was conceived as educational material and quickly became a secret long seller. Even more successful: This is a nuclear plant (1991).

1999 in Los Alamos

Lydia Popova, Russia

Lydia Popova worked for 17 years as a scientific expert in the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy and Industry (MINATOM), when she left in 1990 to become coordinator of SEU (Alternative Energy Program), an umbrella organization for 250 environmental and anti-nuclear groups, and repeatedly pointed out the dangers of a plutonized world community (e.g. "Plutonium in Russia").

1998 in Salzburg

Raúl Montenegro, Argentina

If you want to get a picture of Dr. Raúl A. Montenegro, you'd best ask his opponents, the South American nuclear lobby: Hardly anyone has thwarted their plans more lastingly than the biologist. In Argentina his name is synonymous with "courage in the face of the giants". Without him, the Los Gigantes uranium mines would hardly have had to close and Guatemala would have built a nuclear power plant.
 

Category Solution

Kategorie Lösungen

Category Solutions: Malte Göttsche, Germany

Malte Göttsche advocates for disarmament and the elimination of all nuclear weapons, and is looking for new ways for nuclear-weapon states to build mutual trust to achieve this goal. "This is a service to us all," the NFFF jury said. "We need the mechanisms to understand what nuclear-weapon states are doing, or not doing, if we are to have any chance of achieving the goals of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Malte Göttsche is among those paving the way for that."

Read more …

2018 online

Ray Acheson, USA

Since 2005, Ray Acheson has been involved with intergovernmental disarmament processes, She is one of the most active authors of reporting and gendered analysis on weapons and the international arms trade. An important part of Rays work is empowering civil society organizations through network coordination. One of the most compelling results of her work: the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Foto: Tim Wright

 

Salzburg 2018

Linda Walker, Great Britain

Linda Walker started her Chernobyl Chilrden's Project (CCP) charity in 1995 and offered recreational holidays to healthy children in the UK. Then Linda and her team noticed how positive the stay had been for two children who had undergone severe cancer treatment. The programme was then extended to include sick children and today CCP (UK) is increasingly bringing young cancer rehabilitation patients into the country.

Basel 2017

Hiromichi Umebayashi, Japan

The physicist Dr. Hiromichi Umebayashi is working tirelessly on the vision: No nuclear missiles on the soil of Japan, North and South Korea; Russia, China and the USA should guarantee not to use nuclear weapons against these three states. Behind the stage he is constantly active. With diplomats and politicians and of course with the Mayors for Peace.

Johannesburg 2016

Samson Tsegaye Lemma, Ethiopia

Samson Tsegaye Lemma, as head of the Solar Center in Addis Ababa, has trained 65 solar technicians, built two solar training centers in Ethiopia, solar-electrified four villages, solar-lit 157 schools, provided guidance to 300 individuals and initiatives, and distributed over 30,000 solar light products. A ray of hope for all of Ethiopia.

2015 in Washington D.C.

Tony de Brum, Marshall-Islands

Nine-year-old Tony de Brum was an eyewitness when the largest hellfire ever lit by the USA, the Castle Bravo bomb, detonated in 1954 - a thousand times more powerful than that of Hiroshima. The current Foreign Minister of the Republic of the Marshall Islands spent much of his professional life fighting to repair and compensate for radiation damage.

2014 in Munich

Joseph Laissin Mailong, Cameroon

Joseph Laissin Mailong is Cameroon's Mr Windpower. He has installed various small wind turbines in south- and northwestern Cameroon to bring electricity to these remote regions. His inverter does not consume expensive materials and energy in its manufacture, as is common practice worldwide; it is made up largely of waste materials and is amazingly easy to maintain.

2012 in Heiden

Yves Marignac, France

The reports and opinions of Yves Marignac are also taken seriously in France by the nuclear regulatory authority and the Institute for Radiation Protection and Reactor Safety. For example a report on the nuclear power plant stress test to Fukushima. Shortly before this, the scenario "Manifest néga Watt" had already been published: France could be nuclear-free by 2050, writes co-author Yves Marignac.

2011 in Berlin

Hans Grassmann, Germany

Hans Grassmann examined the social, cultural and ecological benefits of physics with his books: "Das Top Quark, Picasso und Mercedes Benz" (1997), "Alles Quark. Ein Physikbuch" (1999), most recently "Ahnung von der Materie. Physik für alle" (2008). At the University of Udine, he and his students developed a mirror system for heat generation: the linear mirror.

2010 in New York City

Bruno Barrilot, France

50 years after the first nuclear weapons test of the then "Grande Nation", it is thanks to the persistent educational work of Bruno Barrilot and the Documentation and Research Centre on Peace and Conflict CDRPC, which he co-founded in 1989, that the government in Paris passed a law in 2010 to compensate the victims of nuclear tests. Barrilot has been active in Polynesia since 2005.

2007 in Salzburg

Tadatoshi Akiba / Mayors for Peace, Hiroshima, Japan

Mayors for Peace was founded in 1982 on the initiative of the then Mayor of Hiroshima, Takeshi Araki. Since then, the city organization has been fighting against nuclear weapons with appeals, declarations, signature lists, pictures, exhibitions and scientific analyses, showing the nuclear powers that even the threat of the bomb is a crime.

2006 in Window Rock

Heike Hoedt and Wolfgang Scheffler, Germany

The physicist Wolfgang Scheffler developed the 'flexible, shape-variable parabolic mirror with a fixed focal point', in short: the Scheffler mirror, a simple yet sophisticated method of cooking, frying and baking highly efficiently with sunlight. Today, almost a thousand systems are installed in 21 countries. His partner Heike Hoedt is responsible for the global transfer of knowledge.

2005 in Oslo

Preben Maegaard, Denmark

Preben Maegaard set out on the path of renewable energies back in the 1970s. In 1983 he founded the Nordic Folkecenter for Renewable Energies, a non-profit institute for research and testing of renewable energy sources. Denmark is predestined for windmills thanks to its steady wind. Since 1992, 100% of the electricity consumption in Maegaard's home region has been covered by renewables.

2004 in Jaipur

Jonathan Schell, USA

Worldmovers were often people who thought the unthinkable - and then did not leave it at that. The New York journalist Jonathan Schell has been writing since the late 1960s against war and nuclear armament and consistently calls for "abolition". Abolition of all nuclear weapons, worldwide! The USA, as the place with the greatest potential for destruction, must make a start, says Schell.

2003 in Munich

Corbin Harney, USA

Corbin Harney, now a medicine man of the Western Shoshone and one of the great Indian teachers and leaders, was still a small boy when he realized something: Your roots are important! In 1994 he founded the Shundahai Network, an organization that wants to make the voice of the indigenous people audible - for example, against the 1000 or so atomic bombs that exploded on their land for testing purposes.

2002 in St. Petersburg

Helen Clark,New Sealand

In 1999 Helen Clark was elected Prime Minister of New Zealand. Since then, her government has been strongly committed to alliances with other nuclear-free states to create a nuclear-weapon-free world. "Together with many people, organisations and countries, we want to create a world where peoples live together on the basis of trust and mutual respect."

2001 in Carnsore Point

Hans-Josef Fell, Germany

In addition to playing a decisive role in shaping the German "Law on the Priority of Renewable Energies", which came into force on 1.4.2000 and caused a worldwide echo, Fell has helped to implement various support programmes for renewable energies, e.g. the market incentive programme for renewable energies and the tractor conversion programme from diesel to natural vegetable oils.

2000 in Berlin

Barefoot College of Tilonia, India

The founders of Barefoot College in the remote desert village of Tilonia (Rajasthan) had one of these rare ideas in 1971, which proved to be sustainable - even under extreme stress. The pioneers said to themselves in the style of Mahatma Gandhi: "Simple people can do it! And they set out to assemble and repair over 1000 solar modules themselves in the dusty outskirts of the Thar Desert.

1999 in Los Alamos

Ursula and Michael Sladek / EWS, Germany

For the physician Michael Sladek and his wife Ursula, it was a question of medical ethics after Chernobyl to be committed against nuclear power. After sometimes bitter discussions in the municipal council and after two citizens' decisions had been won, the electricity network concession was awarded to the Elektrizitätswerk Schönau (Schönau electricity plant), which had been founded for this purpose. And this produces sustainable and diverse electricity from renewable energies.

1998 in Salzburg

Harendra Nath Sharan, India

The Indian Dr. Harendra Nath Sharan proves with the biogas plant developed by Sharans Engineering Ltd. in Winterthur for Indian conditions that "adapted technology" is also possible for Switzerland and Central Europe. Technology transfer from south to north. It proves how basic energy supply for a rural population can be ensured with few resources.

Categories: Lifetime Achievement and Special Recognition

Kategorie Ehrenpreis

Honor Award (Special Recognition): Cécile Lecomte, France

"Without Cécile Lecomte's commitment, the anti-nuclear movement in Germany would be much weaker and the international dimension of uranium reprocessing would be much less known in Germany," judges the NFFF jury. "Her work is all the more remarkable because she has been seriously ill for years and is confined to a wheelchair. Her commitment to a nuclear weapons-free world is exemplary."

Read more …

Kategorie Ehrenpreis

Honor Award (Lifetime Achievement): Irmgard Gietl, Germany

"The fact that a woman supports the strugglers against the reprocessing plant with warm socks so that they don't get cold feet" impressed us very much, emphasizes the NFFF jury. In any case, Irmgard also attributes the fact that the Bavarian state government abandoned the construction of the WAA in 1989 to her "resistance socks" – that is true in any case, but very modestly formulated.

Read more …

2020 online

Deb Haaland, USA

Deb Haaland was one of the first Native American deputies elected to the US Congress in 2018. Whether it is climate change or Covid 19 – the voice of Democrat Deb Haaland is well heard in Washington. She is currently one of the campaigners for an extension of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) of 2019: the financial compensation is to include uranium miners after 1971, as well as the Trinity Downwinders. She was awarded a "Special Recognition" for her commitment.

Read more …

2018 In Salzburg

Didier & Paulette Anger, France

Didier and Paulette Anger were awarded for their life's work against nuclear power. Since the 1970s, they have experienced the various facets on their doorstep - and have been committed to opposing it: The reprocessing plant at La Hague went into operation in 1966, spent fuel rods from Germany arrived at the Valognes station in 1966, reprocessed nuclear waste and MOX fuel elements were shipped to Japan at the port of Cherbourg, and French nuclear submarines entered and left the port. Finally, in Flamanville, the first reactor block went on line in 1985. The third has been under construction since 2005.

2018 In Salzburg

Peter Weish, Austria

Peter Weish is something like the father of the Austrian anti-nuclear movement. The studied biologist, chemist and physicist was from 1966 to 1970 employee at the Institute for Radiation Protection in the Seiberstof reactor centre. Since 1969 he has been a declared opponent of nuclear power, and it is largely thanks to him that the Zwentendorf nuclear power plant was built but was shut down shortly before it went into operation and never went on line. He was awarded the honorary prize for his life's work.

2017 In Basel

The Dedicated of Switzerland's Anti-Nuke Movement, Switzerland

The term " The Dedicated of Switzerland's Anti-Nuke Movement" unites all the tireless people who have been fighting against nuclear power for decades: 15 initiatives from three language regions (representative: Marcos Buser, Dani Costantino, Michel Fernex, Mira Frauenfelder, Iris Frei, Stefan Füglister, Eva Geel, Niculin Gianotti, Heini Glauser, Jürg Joss, Roland Meyer, Ursula Nakamura, Stefan Ograbek, Georg Pankow, Heidi Portmann, Anne-Cécile Reimann, Philippe de Rougemont, Leo Scherer, Egon Schneebeli, Peter Scholer, Martin Walter, Walter Wildi; posthumously Jürg Aerni and Chaim Nissim). They received the "Special Recognition" for their decades of commitment.

2017 In Basel

Jochen Stay, Germany

Jochen Stay has been fighting against uranium dangers for over 30 years with his "x-tausendfach quer" campaign. X-tausendfach quer was and is the name of the most long-lasting seat-blockade campaign of the anti-nuclear movement. ".ausgestrahlt" - another Stay foundation that has been in existence since 2008 - is now used by hundreds of thousands who want to find out where, who, how to protest against nuclear energy. The "Special Recognition" received for its commitment.

2016 in Johannesburg

Alfred Manyanyata Sepepe, South Africa

Alfred Sepepe became the beacon of hope for all those who have suffered health problems as a result of South Africa's nuclear industry. Together with the NGO "Earthlife Africa Johannesburg" he persuaded many of the 500 ex-pelindaba workers with suspicious symptoms to have themselves examined. He formulated requests, repeatedly alarmed the public and resisted attempts at bribery. For this he received a "special recognition".

2016 in Johannesburg

Susi Snyder and ICAN

As a member of ICAN, the Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, Susi Snyder organizes the campaign "Don't Bank on the Bomb", loosely translated: "Stop financing nuclear weapons manufacturers". The idea is as simple as it is brilliant: From now on, anyone who is in favour of total nuclear disarmament will no longer do business with banks that make nuclear deals. No accounts, no loans, nothing.

2015 in Washington D.C.

Alexander Kmentt, Austria

Ambassador Alexander Kmentt, born in 1965, Head of the Department for Disarmament, Arms Control and Nonproliferation in the Austrian Foreign Ministry, has become one of the most effective advocates for a nuclear-free world worldwide. In December 2014 the U.S. Arms Control Association elected him "Arms Control Person of the Year". Since then he has been fighting against the nuclear death threat.

2015 In Washington D.C.

Cree Youth of Mistissini, Canada

In 2009, the Canadian company Strateco Inc. scoured the area between Chibougamou and Mistissini for uranium and began test drilling. The young Cree Shawn Iserhoff, Justice Debassige, Desmond Michel, Kayleigh Spencer, Catherine Quinn are Cree. In 2012, they marched from Mistissini to Quebec City and Montreal, almost 900 kilometers. "Together Against Uranium" was on their banner.

2014 in Munich

Hans Schuirer, Germany

The resistance against the reprocessing plant in Wackersdorf was supported by the highest politician in the district: Hans Schuierer. The incorruptible district administrator refused the building permit, demonstrated together with his wife Lilo and supported the demonstrators in building their village of huts. This was tantamount to treason. In 1989 the Bavarian government decided not to build the reprocessing plant . He received the NFFA for his life's work.

2014 in Munich

Edmund Lengfelder, Germany

After the Chernobyl catastrophe, the doctor and radiation biologist Edmund Lengfelder immediately went to the Chernobyl site to see the consequences for himself. In 1987, he published a detailed map of the Chernobyl contamination in southern Bavaria; in 1991, he founded a medical centre in Gomel, where to date well over 100,000 children and adults suffering from thyroid disease have been treated. He received the NFFA for his life's work.

2012 in Heiden

Sebastian Pflugbeil, Germany

The physicist Sebastian Pflugbeil was a co-founder of the New Forum in the German Democratic Republic in 1989. He was minister without portfolio in the last Modrow government led by the SED and responsible for the fact that the Greifswald and Rheinsberg nuclear power plants were shut down and no longer built. He later researched the causes of increased leukaemia rates around the Krümmel nuclear power plant and the victims of Chernobyl and Fukushima. He received the NFFA for his life's work.

2012 in Heiden

Susan Boos, Switzerland

The journalist Susan Boos spent months researching the consequences of Chernobyl in 1995. She spoke with clean-up workers, representatives of the authorities, scientists, doctors and people contaminated by the Chernobyl fallout. This can be read in her book "Beherrschtes Entsetzen - das Leben in der Ukraine zehn Jahre nach Tschernobyl" (Controlled horror - life in Ukraine ten years after Chernobyl). In Switzerland, she dealt with her own nuclear policy and wrote, among other things, "Radiant Switzerland" - for which she received the NFFA Honorary Award.

2011 in Berlin

Heinz Stockinger, Austria

After the shutdown of Zwentendorf, Heinz Stockinger founded the "Non-party Salzburg Platform against the Wackersdorf Reprocessing Plant", which - after the shutdown of the WAA - became the "Platform against Nuclear Dangers". For 20 years, the driving force behind this platform has been fighting against the EURATOM Treaty. He called for a Siemens boycott and traveled around the country to make the coalition of nuclear-free countries known. He received the NFFA for his life's work.

2010 in New York City

Henry Red Cloud, Lakota Nation

Henry Red Cloud wants to help all Lakota, Dakota and Nakota to a self-sufficient life. This includes food and energy. By 2010, his small company had equipped over 300 roofs with solar cells. Already in 2008 he founded the "Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center" with the aim of training specialists who then import the solar technology know-how into their tribal communities.

2010 in New York City

Martin Sheen, USA

August 1999: Martin Sheen, who became famous for his leading role in "Apocalypse Now", crosses the yellow cordon that the nuclear laboratory of Los Alamos, New Mexico, pulled against demonstrators. Together with about 400 people, he wants to remind people that the atomic bombs that wiped out two Japanese cities at the end of World War II were produced here. He received the NFFA for his life's work.

2007 In Salzburg

Armin Weiß, Germany

The anti-nuclear movement would have remained helpless if there had not been experts like Prof. Dr. Dr. Armin Weiß. In the highly charged debates about the reprocessing plant Wackersdorf, the chemist pointed out that during normal operation, half a percent of the radioactivity is released into the environment via exhaust stacks during the reprocessing of fuel elements. His expertise helped to prevent Wackersdorf. He received the NFFA for his life's work.

2007 In Salzburg

Freda Meissner-Blau, Austria

Distrust against the nuclear industry has been growing in Freda Meissner-Blau since the 1950's and culminated in the resistance against the Zwentendorf nuclear power plant in 1978, although for her the fight against the nuclear industry is part of a fundamental change. At the World Uranium Hearing in 1992, Freda Meissner-Blau was among those who held people from all over the world together and filled them with courage. She received the NFFA for her life's work.

2006 in Window Rock

Ed Grothus, USA

In 1949, at the age of 26, he signed up in the secret laboratory town of Los Alamos and believed in deterrence in the name of peace for twenty years. In 1969, cleansed by the Vietnam War, he resigned. Since then he has been a warner against the nuclear holocaust. "I am the conscience of Los Alamos," he says, "and sometimes I think I am the only one who is not insane." He received the honorary award for his life's work.

2006 in Window Rock

Phil Harrison, USA

Phil Harrison reported in 1992 at the World Uranium Hearing in Salzburg on the cancer death of his father at the age of 43, who wore neither mouthguards nor gloves in the unventilated uranium mines. Lung cancer, silicosis, leukemia and skin cancer became the miners' diseases. He wants recognition and reparation for the human sacrifices his people have made for the nuclear industry. He was honoured with a special recognition.

2005 in Oslo

Mathilde Halla, Austria

Already in 1973 Mathilde Halla joined the citizens' initiative against nuclear threat. Today the first monument to outdated energy production stands in Zwentendorf. The narrow victory of the opponents of nuclear power in the Austrian referendum of 1978 has a lot to do with Mathilde Halla's commitment. And the opposition to nuclear power in the Czech Republic and Slovakia bears her signature not least. She received the NFFA for her life's work.

2004 in Jaipur

Hildegard Breiner, Austria

Hildegard Breiner, today the Grande Dame of the environmental and anti-nuclear movement in Vorarlberg/Austria, earned her spurs as an activist over a quarter of a century ago - in the fight against Zwentendorf. To this day no nuclear power is produced in Austria because in 1978 the opponents of nuclear power won a referendum very narrowly over the government and the nuclear lobby. The Zwentendorf nuclear power plant was not allowed to be built any further. He received the honorary prize for his life's work.

2004 in Jaipur

City Montesori School Lakhnau, India

Peace education plays a key role in the curriculum of the Montesori School Lakhnau. The school's efforts for total and worldwide disengagement from nuclear technology - both civilian and military - have brought it much attention. And the list of personalities and institutions that have responded to its curriculum is now impressively long. The NFFF honors this with a special recognition.

2003 in Munich

Inge Schmitz-Feuerhake, Germany

Inge Schmitz-Feuerhake's life's work is determined by her scientific achievements in the research of long-term effects in the low-radiation range and their measurability. Exemplary for her commitment is the search of more than ten years for the causes of the accumulation of leukaemia in children in the vicinity of the Geesthacht nuclear facilities. Schleswig-Holstein was therefore given a leukaemia commission. She received the NFFA for her life's work.

2002 in St. Petersburg

Alexei Yablokov, Russia and Francis Macy, USA

Two men from very different worlds, the Russian Alexei Yablokov and the American Francis Macy. Yablokov, founder and president of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy, and Macy, one of the directors of the NGO Tri-Valley CARE, have been working closely together since 1991 and founded the Nuclear Watchdog Network, a coalition of grassroots organizations that monitor nuclear facilities in Russia and Ukraine. They received the honorary award for their life's work.

2002 in St. Petersburg

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, USA

Since the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the magazine published in Chicago reliably reports on questions of the nuclear threat. The Bulletin was founded by former scientists of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. secret program during World War II that was responsible for developing the atomic bomb. Its symbol is the apocalyptic clock showing the imminent end of the world. A special recognition by the NFFA.

2001 in Carnsore Point

Solange Fernex, France

Since the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, biologist Solange Fernex has fought, struck, starved - and slept little - for the end of all nuclear weapons testing. She travelled the world with small luggage and called for disarmament and the renunciation of nuclear energy through microphones and megaphones: The 67-year-old pacifist Solange Fernex is considered the mother of the French anti-nuclear movement. She was awarded the NFFA for her life's work.

2001 in Carnsore Point

David Lowry, Great Britain

After radioactive sludge contaminated the Rio Puerco at Churchrock in 1979 and damaged the nuclear power plant "Three Mile Island", David Lowry started to build up a network of informants and an archive of information about the nuclear industry. His speciality: carefully prepared parliamentary questions for members of the British House of Commons, the European Parliament and the Council of Europe.

2000 in Berlin

Klaus Traube, Germany

After 16 years as a reactor expert and managing director of Interatom, Professor Klaus Traube outlined new energy paths beyond the atom and fossil fuels. He worked as a publicist and director of the Institute for Municipal Energy Economics at the University of Bremen until his retirement. He was the author of calculations for CO2 reduction and exit scenarios. He got the NFFA for his life's work.

1999 in Los Alamos

Stewart Udall, USA

The lawyer Steward Udall was appointed the 37th Secretary of the Interior of the USA by John F. Kennedy after four terms in Congress. Afterwards he supported the victims of the nuclear industry in their fight for compensation. The turning point came in 1978, when he learned how the radioactive fallout from the bomb tests at the Nevada test site caused people in the surrounding area to fall ill and die. He received the NFFA for his life's work.

1998 in Salzburg

Maisie Shiell, Canada

In English it sounds like the well-chosen title of a comedy: "Nobody likes to mess with Maisie". This is how Priscilla Settee, a Cree, from the "Indigenous Women's Network" described the effect of what is probably the strongest single woman army in Canada. Born in England, she was and still is the terror of all Canadian prospectors and uranium mine operators. She received the NFFA for her life's work.