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Subscribe to RSSThe Japanese nuclear emergency has, of course, raised interest in nuclear power in the United States. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission's public records staff says it is "experiencing a larger than normal volume" of requests for public records under the federal Freedom of Information Act. To put it mildly, perhaps.
"Due to the high volume of FOIA requests received as a result of the unexpected events in Japan, response times to requests may be longer than normal," the NRC staff says on its FOIA request page.
At msnbc.com we continue to pursue several reporting angles on this story. Here are the FOIA requests that we've filed with the NRC. We'll let you know what we find.
- The daily calendar for each of the NRC commissioners for the past year. PDF file.
- Any letters or memos documenting exemptions to NRC regulations at a nuclear facility. PDF file.
- The NRC personnel roster showing the full name of each employee, date hired, job title, division and branch, and rate of pay. PDF file.
- Any e-mail or electronic messages sent or received during the week after the Japan earthquake by any of the senior staff of the NRC. We have 45 people on our list. PDF files here and here.
- Any e-mail or electronic messages sent or received during the two weeks after the quake by the 22 key NRC staff involved in seismic issues. PDF file.
What records would you like to see from the NRC? If you're an industry insider with knowledge of a particular situation, what document would you like to see us request?
Post a comment here, or use the links below to send us your document suggestions.
Leave a Comment:
I'd like to see more details regarding charges filed this week against a Tennessee nuclear plant subcontractor. Just exactly what was fraudulent about his inspections and what impact could they have had.
Have you tried searching the NRC website? Typically in situations like this, the utility is found in violation and the violation is public record information available in the ADAMS system on the NRC website.
Is the United States actually monitoring the radiation levels and helping assess the damage at the Fukushima Daiichi plant? If so, I demand our government tell us what readings we are getting and what conditions we have observed in Japan.
Lynseypug,
Would you even know what do with the reading once you get them? From what I've seen, and having worked in the Nuclear power industry for almost 20 years, most people get bent out of shape over minute amounts of radiation. They are some of the same people who spend hours tanning - either in the sunshine or in the tanning beds - where they receive WAAAAAAY more radiation that we would ever see from Japan...
aaaw Mark. What next NO bananas? Yes you're right. Ironically, people bailed out of parts of Japan and by flying back to Europe gave themselves more radiation than if they just stayed put.
I demand to know why President Obama instructed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to withdraw the license for Yucca Mountain to store nuclear waste. I demand to know how the radiation levels are being monitored near population centres in the U.S. for those cities considered within the fallout zone as well as the amount and types of radiation detected outside the grounds of the nuclear power plants.
What if the NRC shuts down a nuclear plan, what happens to the water used to cool the reactor and if they want to perminently shut it down, how do they get rid of the nuclear waste? I keep hearing the politicians in favor of nuclear energy saying how "safe" these plants are. If we cannot recycle the parts, filter the water, or reuse the site for other means how "safe" is it really. The fact is Nuclear is bad for humanity, period. Nuclear is bad for all life forms here on earth, period.
Clearly, if you've made up your mind about nuclear power, what's the point in answering your questions?
But in case you're really interested, once the fuel is removed from the reactor to the spent fuel pool, the reactor coolant can be processed to remove the radioactive materials harmful to the environment and the resultant clean water is discharged to the environment through monitored systems.
The used fuel, once sufficiently cool (~5 years) can be safely transferred to dry storage. Since the permanent dry storage repository promised by DOE is not yet available, the fuel in dry storage is currently kept on site.
Several plants have been successfully decommissioned. Some parts have been recycled for use at other plants to increase the inventory of spare parts available. Many of the original companies that supplied the equipment are now out of business or moved on and some parts are not available. In this case, the parts from shutdown & decommissioned facilities put off the need to redesign (usually a more expensive proposition) the subsystem to make use of available substitute parts.
L, you are precisely correct.
Publish list of all safety inspections and results at all NPP's.
They're readily available on the NRC website. No FOIA request required. Only the details of security inspections are withheld as one would expect. (The results of the inspections are available but the details are not.)
This is great - msnbc acting like obtaining these documents is some kind of revelation. All NPP licensing documents including inspections, violations, events and everything else is publicly available on the NRC website and has been since the beginning of commercial nuclear power (publicly available anyway...there were no websites back then). The nuclear industry is the most open and well regulated industry in the US. Stop listening to idiots and learn for yourself...
"Think," there are documents that the NRC now makes available, yes, and there are documents that it does not.
Let's take the example of the daily schedules of the NRC commissioners. These are public records, available under the Freedom of Information Act.
The NRC commissioners, on their Web sites, make a show of transparency. Here, for example, is a link to the schedule for the chairman of the NRC:
http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/organization/commission/comm-gregory-jaczko/meetings.html
Look carefully at that page. Do you actually believe that in January 2011 the chairman of the NRC had only seven meetings?
As with any government agency, there is always a difference -- a wide gap -- between the public records that it volunteers to place on its Web site, and the public records that are available under FOIA.
I am writing about the work of the late Dr. John Gofman of UC Berkeley, in relation to nuclear power. I have never seen a rebuttal to his powerful work, Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power, published in the 1970's. As the lead reseacher on the effects of radiation on living systems for the NRC from 1964-1971, he came to some very damaging conclusions in relation to nuclear power. His worked was suppressed by Congress, and he then concluded his career as a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley.
So, my question is, is there anyone in NRC who can offer an explanation about the validity of his work, and why it is not a centerpiece of the debate today? Since he was the lead researcher for NRC for 7 years, it seems that we should be paying attention to his research. Is it no longer valid for some reason, or do we now have to spend the money to do the same work all over again?
Any info you can provide would be most appreciated.
Sincerely,
Tom O'Mara
I have so many questions!!
Regarding Yucca Mountain:
How can that land just be taken over? Since it is considered Sacred, are there no laws to protect it? Would it be paid for, and who would decide the price? Which nuclear plants want to store their waste there? How would the waste be transported? What are the safety policies and statistics? Shouldn't the developers have a dump site prepared as the reactor is being built?
Regarding Nuclear Reactors on American Fault Lines:
What are the evacuation and safety plans when an earthquake and sunami hits the west coast? Are they adequate for the population? Do they include encompass a large enough geographical area? Are the roads and bridges equiped to handle the mass exodus? Where will the people go? What about the people who don't have vehicles or those with handicaps? What about our fellow citizens who live paycheck to paycheck? An extra 2 or 3 tanks of gas to run to safety would be about impossible to manage. How will aid be delivered to destroyed areas? With the economy the way it is, and the dense population on the west coast, I don't see how or where evacuees could be absorbed.
I am not an alarmist, but seeing the devastation in Japan, I am alarmed.
Thinkforyourself, great post. It is amazing how little research even a "news" website like msnbc would do before writing an article like this. You could probably spend 3 hours on the ADAMS search on the NRCs website and find out more information than msnbc could generate in most of their nuclear power "articles".
Phil, reposting for your benefit:
"Think," there are documents that the NRC now makes available, yes, and there are documents that it does not.
Let's take the example of the daily schedules of the NRC commissioners. These are public records, available under the Freedom of Information Act.
The NRC commissioners, on their Web sites, make a show of transparency. Here, for example, is a link to the schedule for the chairman of the NRC:
http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/organization/commission/comm-gregory-jaczko/meetings.html
Look carefully at that page. Do you actually believe that in January 2011 the chairman of the NRC had only seven meetings?
As with any government agency, there is always a difference -- a wide gap -- between the public records that it volunteers to place on its Web site, and the public records that are available under FOIA.
Yes, I've spent hours on ADAMS, but documents like these don't end up there -- until someone requests them under FOIA.
I will be following your investigation with great interest. Always saddens me to see how many citizens are willing to accept superficial answers to critical questions, how few the voting number posses ing critical thinking or analysis skills. Was it Kissinger who said Americans would trade liberty for the illusion of security?
I want to know who signs NRC paychecks, and where the shredded documents are buried.
Son in Japan. I monitor Ministry of Science data for his area. I HAVE figured out that .04 microsieverts/hr means he should stay put -MARK3237594.
Boy this "demanding stuff" really gets me. Who do you think you are that you think you can demand things from others? Most of you don't even know what you are demanding and if you got it in your hands you wouldn't know what it means anyway. Why should my tax money go to pay for the work of honoring your demands. If you are so denied of "vital" information why don't you use your money to pay for the private company information services that people in the field pay for. You guys really really get me!
biogez,
You may be missing the fact that we and others who request public records are not r"demanding" someone else's documents. We're requesting our documents.
Public records belong to all of us. They're your records, biogez, and ours. They don't belong to the public employees. (The laws call the public employees "custodians" of records.) They belong to the public.
As for bearing the cost of fulfilling public records requests, remember that open goverment is a governmental function. It's part of running the government, as essential as keeping the light bill paid.
whats going to happen to those people
Some of this is invasive of people's privacy: Why would you need to know the names of all NRC employees along with their salaries? What would salary have to do with anything regarding safety? The daily calendar is kind of iffy as a FOIA request for full disclosure. I think power plant planning, construction, evaluation information has merit. I think exemptions granted for plants has merit, the rest is just witch hunt material and if you did get it would probably result in much ado about nothing.
Steve13, thanks for your comment. The names, salaries and titles of public officials are key to making sense of other documents obtained. By the way, there are lists already available on the NRC Web site of the NRC staff salaries -- though the latest list I could find is a year old -- so in that case we're just asking for an update, though with the job titles and divisions as well. When we're looking at schedules and meetings, we will need that info.
The larger point, of course, is that knowing how much we pay public employees is not an invasion of their privacy. You may own a business. Would it be an invasion of your employee's privacy for you, the employer, to know how much you are paying your employees? Of course not. The same rule applies here: The employers, the American taxpayers, should always be able to know how much they're paying, and for what.
Can the NRC reconcile its domestic policy requiring nuke plants to have evacuation plans for only 10 miles around a plant with the directive to United States citizens in Japan to stay 50 miles or more from Fukushima Daiichi? A 50 mile evacuation zone around Indian Point would require the evacuation of almost 20 million people, including most of New York City (and all of Manhattan). Are we really so naive as to believe that there's no need to worry because what's happened in Japan could never happen here? Japan thought it could never happen there and now admits it was woefully unprepared. An earthquake, a cat-5 hurricane, human error, a terrorist attack on the unprotected spent fuel pools? Something else we've never considered? Remember 9/11? Remember the BP gusher in the gulf? Remember Fukushima Daiichi!!!
If the NRC concludes that it would be infeasible/impossible to evacuate 50 miles around Indian Point, it should order that the plant be closed and decommissioned forthwith. Those of us who live in the area are entitled to the same level of protection and guidance from the NRC as American citizens in Japan.