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A U.S. Department of Energy investigation into the removal and discarding of filters from eight drums containing radioactive waste at an eastern Idaho nuclear facility has determined that the incident was not an act of sabotage.

However, officials offered no explanation as to why an employee removed the filters, creating the potential for contaminating other workers.

The company responsible for processing the nuclear waste, Bechtel BWXT Idaho, said an employee confessed to removing the filters, according to Bechtel spokesman Rick Dale.

Officials have refused to identify the individual, who no longer works at the facility.

No one was contaminated, the company said.

Bechtel immediately increased security after the April 9 incident was discovered.

Those procedures included requiring permission from management before employees could enter the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project facility at the Idaho National Laboratory, an 890-square-mile federal nuclear research area.

Once inside, the company also required employees to maintain visual contact with each other. Those precautions have since been discontinued.

The precautions were put in place according to two internal company memos obtained by the Post Register, one sent to Bechtel employees on April 10 and another on April 14.

“I cannot overstate the seriousness of this incident,” Bechtel President and General Manager Jeff Mousseau wrote in the April 10 memo. “Whether deliberate or an accident, had there been a release of radioactivity from these drums, the people who would have been exposed to potential contamination would have been our fellow workers.”

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