The Nuclear Fusion Award ceremony for 2009 and 2010 award winners was held during the 23rd IAEA Fusion Energy Conference in Daejeon. This time, both 2009 and 2010 award winners were celebrated by the IAEA and the participants of the 23rd IAEA Fusion Energy Conference. The Nuclear Fusion Award is a paper prize to acknowledge the best distinguished paper among the published papers in a particular volume of the Nuclear Fusion journal. Among the top-cited and highly-recommended papers chosen by the Editorial Board, excluding overview and review papers, and by analyzing self-citation and non-self-citation with an emphasis on non-self-citation, the Editorial Board confidentially selects ten distinguished papers as nominees for the Nuclear Fusion Award. Certificates are given to the leading authors of the Nuclear Fusion Award nominees. The final winner is selected among the ten nominees by the Nuclear Fusion Editorial Board voting confidentially.2009 Nuclear Fusion Award nomineesFor the 2009 award, the papers published in the 2006 volume were assessed and the following papers were nominated, most of which are magnetic confinement experiments, theory and modeling, while one addresses inertial confinement. Sabbagh S.A. et al 2006 Resistive wall stabilized operation in rotating high beta NSTX plasmas Nucl. Fusion46 635–44 La Haye R.J. et al 2006 Cross-machine benchmarking for ITER of neoclassical tearing mode stabilization by electron cyclotron current drive Nucl. Fusion46 451–61 Honrubia J.J. et al 2006 Three-dimensional fast electron transport for ignition-scale inertial fusion capsules Nucl. Fusion46 L25–8 Ido T. et al 2006 Observation of the interaction between the geodesic acoustic mode and ambient fluctuation in the JFT-2M tokamak Nucl. Fusion46 512–20 Plyusnin V.V. et al 2006 Study of runaway electron generation during major disruptions in JET Nucl. Fusion46 277–84 Pitts R.A. et al 2006 Far SOL ELM ion energies in JET Nucl. Fusion46 82–98 Berk H.L. et al 2006 Explanation of the JET n = 0 chirping mode Nucl. Fusion46 S888–97 Urano H. et al 2006 Confinement degradation with beta for ELMy HH-mode plasmas in JT-60U tokamak Nucl. Fusion46 781–7 Izzo V.A. et al 2006 A numerical investigation of the effects of impurity penetration depth on disruption mitigation by massive high-pressure gas jet Nucl. Fusion46 541–7 Inagaki S. et al 2006 Comparison of transient electron heat transport in LHD helical and JT-60U tokamak plasmas Nucl. Fusion46 133–41 Watanabe T.-H. et al 2006 Velocity–space structures of distribution function in toroidal ion temperature gradient turbulence Nucl. Fusion46 24–322010 Nuclear Fusion Award nomineesFor the 2010 award, the papers published in the 2007 volume were assessed and the following papers were nominated, all of which are magnetic confinement experiments and theory. Rice J.E. et al 2007 Inter-machine comparison of intrinsic toroidal rotation in tokamaks Nucl. Fusion47 1618–24 Lipschultz B. et al 2007 Plasma–surface interaction, scrape-off layer and divertor physics: implications for ITER Nucl. Fusion47 1189–205 Loarer T. et al 2007 Gas balance and fuel retention in fusion devices Nucl. Fusion47 1112–20 Garcia O.E et al 2007 Fluctuations and transport in the TCV scrape-off layer Nucl. Fusion47 667–76 Zonca F. et al 2007 Electron fishbones: theory and experimental evidence Nucl. Fusion47 1588–97 Maggi C.F. et al 2007 Characteristics of the H-mode pedestal in improved confinement scenarios in ASDEX Upgrade, DIII-D, JET and JT-60U Nucl. Fusion47 535–51 Yoshida M. et al 2007 Momentum transport and plasma rotation profile in toroidal direction in JT-60U L-mode plasmas Nucl. Fusion47 856–63 Zohm H. et al 2007 Control of MHD instabilities by ECCD: ASDEX Upgrade results and implications for ITER Nucl. Fusion47 228–32 Snyder P.B. et al 2007 Stability and dynamics of the edge pedestal in the low collisionality regime: physics mechanisms for steady-state ELM-free operation Nucl. Fusion47 961–8 Urano H. et al 2007 H-mode pedestal structure in the variation of toroidal rotation and toroidal field ripple in JT-60U Nucl. Fusion47 706–13 Günter S. et al 2007 Interaction of energetic particles with large and small scale instabilities Nucl. Fusion47 920–8