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Part of a report by the US Department of Energy Office of the Inspector General relaying that a contractor at the Idaho National Laboratory was terminated after attempting to board a flight to South Korea in possession of export-controlled information related to nuclear reactors.

An employee with a research laboratory affiliated with the US Department of Energy (DOE) was fired after being caught attempting to take nuclear reactor design software — an item that was not supposed to be exported — to Korea, a report shows.

According to a semiannual report that the DOE Office of the Inspector General submitted to Congress in the first half of 2024, the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) fired a contractor employee who had been caught attempting to board a plane bound for Korea carrying nuclear reactor design software. The termination came during an investigation of export controls.

That was the first in a list of actions taken in response to Office of the Inspector General reports and investigations between October 2023 and March 2024.

The software in question, a proprietary reactor design program owned by the INL, is classified as export-controlled information under US federal regulation 10 CFR Part 810. This DOE-managed regulation governs approving or denying assistance for nuclear energy activities in other countries.

The Office of the Inspector General said in the report that it had “determined that the information was export-controlled and conducted a search of the employee’s Government emails and chats showing the employee’s knowledge of the export control restrictions and their communications with a foreign government.”

The report noted that the incident was being investigated by the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations, but did not specify whether the “foreign government” in question was Korea.

Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told reporters on Monday that the DOE’s inclusion of Korea on its “Sensitive and Other Designated Countries List” was apparently not a foreign policy issue, but “related to security issues at a DOE-affiliated laboratory.”

The Korean government is reportedly assessing whether the example cited in the Office of the Inspector General’s report is one of the regulatory violations the US has taken issue with. US officials have apparently not specified which security regulations were violated or how they were violated.

South Korean Industry and Energy Minister Ahn Duk-geun will be visiting the US this week to discuss this issue, along with other pending energy issues, with US Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

By Kim Won-chul, Washington correspondent

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]