IMPORTANT NEWS FOR SUBSCRIBERS!

NUCLEAR MONITOR, WISE NEWS COMMUNIQUE TO MERGE

This will be the final issue of The Nuclear Monitor in its current format. As you know, just over a year ago NIRS and WISE-Amsterdam completed a formal affiliation agreement. One of the benefits of that agreement is about to take place: the new, combined Nuclear Monitor/WISE News Communique. Both NIRS and WISE-Amsterdam have published separate newsletters for more than 20 years; now, we’re combining our efforts to publish a single newsletter with a worldwide reach that will draw upon both of our expert staffs and on knowledgeable grassroots activists from across the globe.

The benefits to Nuclear Monitor readers will be quickly obvious. Instead of the sporadic publishing schedule of the Monitor, which in the past two years has come out whenever we have time to write it, subscribers will receive 20 issues per year, on a regular basis. There will continue to be the essential news about atomic power and issues in the U.S., but also expanded news about international nuclear developments and trends—essential to understanding the globalized nature of today’s nuclear industry. The U.S. version will also include the periodic magazine-style articles that have marked the Monitor in recent years. The first issue of the new Nuclear Monitor will be published in mid-January.

Another change is that the new Nuclear Monitor will now be offered via e-mail, fully formatted in Adobe Acrobat .pdf format. You can now get the Monitor on a same-day basis—the day it goes to the printer is the day you’ll receive it in your in-box; waiting for the printed version to arrive in the mail will take a week or more. We encourage everyone to take advantage of this improved delivery format; for one thing, it will save NIRS substantial printing and postage costs. There currently is no difference in subscription price for the e-mail or printed versions and we will send the printed version to any subscriber who wants it. However, subscription prices are more likely to rise for the printed version than e-mail version in the future. Please contact NIRS (at nirsnet@nirs.org) if you would prefer (or are even willing) to receive the Monitor in e-mail format only.

A few other notes: All North American readers should contact NIRS about problems or comments about their subscriptions; readers in other countries should contact WISE-Amsterdam, regardless of which organization you originally subscribed with. Librarians: the new Nuclear Monitor will be numbered differently than in the past, please contact NIRS if you have any questions about the new numbering system. Researchers: each article in the new Nuclear Monitor will be numbered, which will correspond with a number on the WISE-Amsterdam website, making it easier to find and search for electronic versions of articles. Articles that are not numbered appear only in the North American edition of the Monitor, and will be made available on the NIRS website.

The Russian-language version of the WISE NC will continue to be published, as the Nuclear Monitor, by WISE-Kaliningrad. We intend to begin publishing a Spanish-language version (that will also be available in North America and on NIRS’ website) during 2002.

Finally, NIRS/WISE-Amsterdam are pleased to announce the opening of offices with paid staff in Kyiv and Rivne, Ukraine and in Bratislava, Slovakia, beginning January 1, 2002. This represents the first stage of our commitment to build a truly effective, international grassroots network to meet the demands of the anti-nuclear/sustainable energy movement in the 21st century.