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Worker suspected of stealing nuclear secrets from US lab

An employee at a US nuclear research laboratory was arrested on Thursday for taking secret uranium enrichment equipment, the Justice Department announced.

Roy Lynn Oakley, 67, worked for Bechtel Jacobs, a contractor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a US nuclear research facility created in the 1940s to develop a nuclear bomb.

Oakley was charged with taking US government data and hardware and agreeing to pass it to another person.

ABC television said he was arrested trying to sell it to an undercover agent.

It was unclear how the low-level contract worker, who did maintenance work and escorted visitors at the Oak Ridge National lab in Knoxville, Tennessee, managed to access the classified documents.

Bechtel Jacobs is the Department of Energy's prime environmental management contractor at East Tennessee Technology Park. The company specializes in decontamination and nuclear waste management.

Oakley had reason to believe that equipment would be "utilized to injure the United States and secure an advantage to a foreign nation," the Justice Department statement said.

He was to appear before a US Magistrate in Knoxville later on Thursday.

If convicted on both charges, Oakley could be imprisoned for up to 20 years, and pay a fine of US$500,000.

The US Department of Energy said the materials posed no threat to people who may have come across them.

"While none of the stolen equipment was ever transmitted to a foreign government or terrorist organization, the facts of this case demonstrate the importance of safeguarding our nuclear technology and pursuing aggressive prosecutions against those who attempt to breach the safeguards and put that technology in the wrong hands," Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein said in the statement.
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