Privacy Digest

Officials vow security probe at Palo Verde: "State and federal officials plan inquiries into operations at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in the wake of accusations that a former plant employee illegally downloaded software with details of the plant while he was in Iran.

Arizona Congressmen Harry Mitchell and John Shadegg on Saturday termed the allegations 'troubling' and promised a detailed review.

'It is very troubling to learn that a Palo Verde employee may have smuggled secrets about the nuclear plant to a dangerous regime dead-set on developing a nuclear weapon,' said Mitchell, a freshman Democrat. 'This requires an internal review of all security procedures in the plant and requires us to look closely at what can be done to prevent this from happening again.'

Gov. Janet Napolitano declined to comment on the incident. But representatives of her office said her staff has begun discussions with Pinnacle West Capital Corp., the parent company of Arizona Public Service Co., which manages the plant.

Palo Verde is the nation's largest nuclear plant and sits 50 miles west of downtown Phoenix.

The allegations center on former Palo Verde engineer Mohammad Alavi, 49, who is accused in a recently unsealed federal affidavit of traveling to Tehran last year and downloading, from a Maryland-based Palo Verde vendor, software that contained details of the plant. Those included information about control rooms, reactors and design. The software was used to simulate situations for training.

Alavi is an Iranian native who has lived in the United States as a naturalized citizen since 1976. He was arrested earlier this month in Los Angeles upon returning from Iran and is being held without bail.

Alavi began working at Palo Verde in 1989 and resigned his position in August. In the weeks before he left, he was given codes to access the training software, authorities say.

Two days after leaving, he and his wife flew to Iran. The FBI alleges that in October he used the codes to download the software to his laptop."

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Editor:The scary/sad part is that this is supposed to be one of those industries that actually care about and implements good security protocols.