Tri-Valley CAREs
Communities Against a Radioactive Environment
Since June of 2013, Tri-Valley CAREs has been litigating the National Nuclear Security Administration and Department of Energy's failure to provide documents in response to five of our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Requests. FOIA requires government agencies to respond to requests in 20 days, but these requests had been pending for two to three years. In response to Tri-Valley CAREs' litigation, all five requests were responded to with meaningful documents and the government agreed to cover the expense of litigation.
In 2011 and early 2012 Tri-Valley CAREs requested documents relating to: 1) The use of fissionable material (like plutonium) in Livermore Lab's National Ignition Facility; 2) The deinventorying of Special Nuclear Material from Livermore Lab; 3) The Revised or Alternative Plutonium Strategy (which includes plans to ship plutonium pits to Livermore); 4) The expansion of Livermore Lab's High Explosives Applications Facility; and 5) The Inspector Generals investigation in to beryllium exposures at Livermore Lab. The agencies failed to produce any responsive documents until Tri-Valley CAREs brought suit in June of 2013. The final responsive documents were just produced last week.
The litigation included several disagreements over portions of documents that were withheld by the agencies. Once these agreements were resolved, Tri-Valley CAREs commenced reviewing hundreds of produced pages. In the coming weeks and months much of the information learned from these requests will assist our analysis of NNSA and DOE programs and will appear in articles in our newsletter and on this website. Some of the most useful documents will also get posted in the 'Government Docs' section of this site.