According to Kyodo News, an employee of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority lost a work-issued smartphone during a private trip to China in November last year. The phone contained highly confidential and undisclosed names and contact details of staff from nuclear safety-related departments.
On the 6th, Kyodo News quoted relevant sources, reporting the news and adding that the phone has still not been recovered. The Nuclear Regulation Authority stated that "the possibility of information leakage cannot be ruled out" and has already reported the matter to Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission.
The report also mentioned that the phone was suspected to have been lost at a Shanghai airport during security screening, specifically when retrieving carry-on luggage. The employee did not notice until three days later, after which inquiries were made to the airport and other locations, but the phone was not found. As the phone could no longer receive a signal, remote locking or data erasure could not be performed.
According to a Bloomberg report, this incident is the latest in a series of recent mishaps and comes at a time when Japan is promoting the restart of its idled nuclear reactors. Such mistakes could undermine public trust in nuclear regulation. In 2023, an employee of Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates the world's largest nuclear power plant, left a stack of documents on top of a car and drove off, resulting in the loss of the documents.
Strict regulatory procedures have delayed the restart of most nuclear reactors that were shut down after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.