Watchdog group sues for documents from the Department of Energy
By David Kramer, Physics Today, June 21, 2016
A California advocacy group has filed suit against the US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) for alleged violations of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The watchdog group, Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment), says in a June 10 complaint filed in US District Court for the Northern District of California that the NNSA is up to four years overdue in delivering requested documents.
The information in question concerns experiments with plutonium at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), a shipment of anthrax to the lab, and management of the lab’s aging high-risk facilities. Tri-Valley CAREs also alleges that the NNSA failed to provide information about a 2012 study on the construction of a proposed plutonium pit manufacturing facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The project, known as the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Facility, was formally canceled by DOE in February.
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