PHOENIX – A former engineer at the nation's largest nuclear power plant who's accused of taking software back to his native to Iran claims he was only trying to show off for his family and friends.
Mohammad Alavi, 49, also told FBI agents that he moved to Iran to be closer to his family and was about to start a job with an electric-motor company there.
He also said the laptop computer containing the software is still in a closet at his mother's house in Tehran, according to records obtained by The Arizona Republic.
Alavi, an Iranian native who lived in the United States as a naturalized citizen for 30 years, is being held without bail in Arizona.
He has been charged with a single count of violating a trade embargo with Iran, which carries a maximum penalty of 24 months in prison. Trial is set for July 3.
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Alavi worked at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station west of Phoenix for 16 years until August, when he resigned and moved to Tehran.
He was arrested on April 8 as he stepped off a plane in Los Angeles. He had returned to the United States with his wife for the birth of their first child.
Alavi's attorney said his client wasn't the only Palo Verde employee to download the details of control rooms, reactors and designs as part of a software training package onto his personal laptop and take it home.
Officials with the Arizona Public Service Co., a Phoenix-based utility company that operates Palo Verde, confirm that employees were encouraged to download the software onto personal laptops and work on it at home.
The software provides employees with emergency scenarios and instructs them to react with proper procedures. It has no links to actual plant workings and can't be used to affect operations.
"What (Alavi) was doing with software was not unusual and certainly not limited to him," said APS spokesman Jim McDonald, stressing there is nothing classified about the software.
APS did not know Alavi had left the country with the information until the Maryland software manufacturer reported attempts had been made to access the Palo Verde training system from an address in Tehran.
Alavi admitted downloading the software in Iran but said he did it to show relatives and a business associate, according to court records.
The plant, located in Wintersburg about 50 miles west of downtown Phoenix, supplies electricity to some 4 million customers in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California.
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