January/February 1998 Issue

Look Who’s Buying Nukes Now — Gallery

Photographs by Timothy Rice from his series titled “Living With the Cloudmakers.”

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A Salem, N.J. nuclear power plant, viewed from Augustine Beach in Port Penn, Del.
U.S. nuclear plants produce $40 billion worth of energy each year, accounting for 20 percent of the U.S. energy supply.
The Three Mile Island plant in Middletown, Pa.
There are 110 nuclear power plants currently operating in the U.S. The Department of Energy predicts that 50 of these will close by 2015.
Limerick Generating Station in Limerick, Pa., viewed from neighboring Pottstown.
Nuclear energy costs $2.04 per kilowatt-hour; fossil fuels cost $2.11 per kwh; hydropower costs $.059 per kwh.
The Salem Nuclear Generating Station, viewed from nearby Augustine Beach.
Between 1968 and 1994, nuclear power plants produced 30,000 metric tons of uranium waste.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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