A former employee at the URENCO USA uranium enrichment facility in New Mexico has been barred from conducting Nuclear Regulatory Commission-licensed activities for one year.
Justin Roberts was working as a contract assembler at the plant in Eunice in September 2016 when he placed an unidentified, confidential part into another worker’s lunchbox, according to an NRC order issued on Sept. 5. That person then unknowingly took it home. Security staff at the plant reported the component missing to the FBI on Sept. 20, 2016, the same day the employee alerted URENCO that he had found the item in his lunchbox.
The NRC investigated the incident through October 2018. It found only Roberts’ fingerprints on a sheet of paper also placed in the lunchbox, determined he was among just eight people who had access to the part in question, and provided dishonest testimony “regarding his work for his previous employer and his employment status.”
“Based on the physical evidence obtained that demonstrates that Mr. Roberts had handled the paper found in ETUS Employee #1’s lunchbox, along with Mr. Roberts access to the component and demonstrable lack of credibility, it appears that Mr. Roberts removed the component from the clean room and placed it in ETUS Employee #1’s lunchbox,” according to the order.
That action put the facility in breach of federal regulations on nuclear facility security clearance and safeguards of national security information and restricted information, the order says.
The one-year prohibition prevents Roberts from doing, supervising, aiding or otherwise participating in any work conducted under NRC specific or general licenses. For a year afterward, he must alert the agency to any initial employment in NRC-licensed operations, according to an NRC press release.
While the NRC cited the URENCO plant for breach of regulatory security requirements, it did not issue a penalty as the company had identified and addressed the matter.