Greenpeace letter to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, January 26, 2004

Dear Ms. Reed:

Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. 522, as amended and 10 C.F.R. 9.8 of the Commission's regulations, Greenpeace requests that NRC provide us with any and all documents in the possession of the NRC, including the office of the Executive Director of Operations, the NRC Chairman and all NRC Commissioner’s Office’s, especially that of Commissioner McGaffigan regarding the President’s 2003 State of the Union address. Specifically Greenpeace seeks any and all information concerning the President’s assertion that, “(w)e have found diagrams of American nuclear power plants…” in the caves of Afghanistan.

Please consider "documents" to include reports, studies, test results, correspondence, memoranda, meeting notes, meeting minutes, working papers, graphs, charts, diagrams, notes and summaries of conversations and interviews, computer records, e-mail and any other form of written communications including internal NRC memoranda.

Pursuant to and in compliance with 10 C.F.R. 9.41 of the Commission's regulations governing requests for fee waivers, Greenpeace provides the following information.

Greenpeace seeks the requested information solely to contribute to and help shape the public debate concerning NRC’s role in the regulation of the nuclear industry. The information provided by the NRC will be analyzed and extracted for use in our analysis of the NRC’s on going efforts to secure our nation’s nuclear reactors from terrorist attack.

Greenpeace is a nationally known non-profit public interest organization founded in 1971. We will use these documents in preparation of our analysis of the NRC’s oversight process and the significance determination process. As Greenpeace’s nuclear policy analyst I have over a decade of experience deciphering NRC documents and making the information contained in them more understandable to the public.

The requested information and Greenpeace’s analysis will greatly contribute to the public’s understanding of the Commission’s role in regulating the nuclear industry. We plan to broadly disseminate the information contained in our analysis to the press and the general public. For several years now our publications, comments and press releases have been made available free of charge on our web site.

Our past publications have attracted attention in the local, national and trade media. Copies of the reports have been distributed to members of the public, the nuclear industry, citizen groups, federal & state governments and members of Congress.

Greenpeace has neither a commercial nor a private interest in the agency records sought. Since "disclosure of the information is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to the public understanding of the operation or activities of the government and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester" (5 U.S.C. 552 (a)(4)(A) (iii)), we request a complete waiver of any processing or duplicating costs you might incur in providing these records to us. If you rule otherwise, please notify us before filling the request.

If all or any parts of this request are denied, please cite the specific exemptions on which you rely in refusing to release the documents. Further, since the Freedom of Information Act provides that the remainder of a file must be released if only portions are exempt from disclosure, we request that we be provided with all non-exempt portions that are reasonably segregable. Of course, we reserve our right to appeal the withholding or deletion of any information.

As provided in the Freedom of Information Act Amendments, we will expect to receive the requested records or a final determination within twenty working days. If your office is unable to fully respond to this request in that time, please send us a written estimate of when the request will be completed.

If you have any questions about this request, please telephone me at XXX-XXX-XXXX.

Thank you for your attention to this request.

Sincerely,