An employee of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) lost a work phone containing confidential staff contact details during a personal trip to China. The incident occurred on November 3 at a Shanghai airport.
The employee reported the phone missing three days later after discovering its absence. Efforts to recover the device through airport checks were unsuccessful. The lost phone held contact information for staff involved in nuclear security operations at the NRA. The agency has not confirmed if the data was accessed or compromised.
The NRA issues smartphones to specific employees to enable prompt responses during emergencies. The department to which the employee belongs is responsible for safeguarding nuclear materials from threats such as theft and terrorism at various facilities.
Following the incident, the NRA submitted a report to Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission. The agency has also issued a directive advising employees against transporting work-issued phones during international travel.
This event occurs as Japan continues efforts to reactivate its atomic energy program, which has remained largely inactive for over a decade since all nuclear power plant reactors were shut down in 2011. This shutdown followed a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami that resulted in a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant. The NRA was established after the Fukushima disaster with the mandate to oversee nuclear safety and the eventual restarting of the nation's reactors.
Prior security-related incidents at Japanese nuclear facilities have been documented:
- In 2023, an employee at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant misplaced documents.
- In November of the previous year, another employee at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant was found to have made unauthorized copies of confidential documents, which were then locked in a desk.
- Recently, Chubu Electric Power, an operator of a nuclear plant in central Japan, indicated that it might have utilized selected data during safety screenings for its nuclear facility. In response, the NRA suspended its review for Chubu to restart its reactors, citing the 'fabrication of critical inspection data'.