The
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was passed by Congress in 1966. It
lets you, whether you’re a citizen or not, request documents from any
federal agency, and the agency must give you copies, unless they fall
under one of nine exemptions.
How
do you to make a FOIA request? You submit a letter or email with as
many specifics as possible. Remember that the more specific you are
about the information you want, the more likely we’ll be able to locate
the information.
Under
FOIA, you can ask for a copy of any NRC document. This does not mean,
however, that the NRC will give you anything you want. The Act requires
the NRC to withhold sensitive information, such as personal privacy
information, allegation information, investigative related records,
proprietary information, classified or safeguards information. If we do
withhold information from you, we will tell you why.
You
should also understand that the purpose of the Act is to give the
public access to existing information. That is, FOIA does not require us
to create documents to satisfy your request, or to conduct research or
investigations or analyze data to answer your written questions.
After
we receive your request, we will send you a letter giving you the name
and phone number of the FOIA specialist assigned to your request. We
also will tell you if we’re going to
charge
you for finding, reviewing, and copying the documents.
The
agency will then conduct a search for the information you requested,
and determine if what we find can be given to you. If information is
withheld from you, you will be allowed to appeal the withholding.
Instructions on how to appeal will be provided to you.
We may post the redacted documents
online
so that others can see recent FOIA requests.
How
long does the process take? Generally, we can get you the information
you asked for in 20 working days. If your request is complicated -- for
instance, the information you want is scattered in offices across the
NRC -- we try to get the information back to you in 30 working days. We
are still working on a large number of FOIA requests received as a
result of the Fukushima accident in Japan last March, so sometimes
response times are longer than normal.
is a good place to start.
Margie Janney
Deputy Director, Information and Records Services Division
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