A translation company under contract with the Nuclear Regulation Authority has leaked an internal, classified document online from the nuclear watchdog, its secretariat said.
The document does not contain confidential information but is marked "Classified 2," one of three levels of classification by the government, the secretariat said Tuesday.
The document contains information on how spent nuclear fuel is reprocessed, regulations on reprocessing, and details about nuclear power plants.
The NRA secretariat suspects the source of the leak is Erklaren, a Tokyo-based company it hired to have Japanese documents translated into English. The company sent the document, without password protection, to a job applicant, according to the secretariat. Erklaren solicited translators who would double-check its translations via a private-sector online bulletin board.
Kenichi Fujita, head of the international affairs office at the NRA secretariat, insisted the document is not confidential, saying it is part of "materials compiled from information that is already known."
The information leak was discovered through a tip that the secretariat received that the translation company was urgently looking for people to translate the NRA document via the online bulletin board.
Translation companies hired by the NRA secretariat are prohibited from outsourcing their work or revealing such content to a third party, official Hitoshi Kometani said, adding that Erklaren has violated that policy.
The translation company undertook the work for ¥40 million. The secretariat is considering whether to pay the firm and whether to blacklist the it from bidding on future contracts.