A former in-house federal inspector at a Virginia nuclear plant is facing up to five years of prison time after he was found guilty of intentionally falsifying inspection reports, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s inspector general announced this week.
Gregory Croon, NRC’s former resident inspector for the North Anna Power Station in Mineral, Va., pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia Monday to making false statements on the plant’s inspection reports, the inspector general said in a press release. Croon was caught following a joint investigation by the inspector general and the Department of Justice, the statement said.
Croon, who retired in 2020, produced the falsified reports during his tenure as North Anna’s resident inspector from 2016 to 2018, NRC said.
According to court documents dated Monday, Croon said on “at least three” quarterly inspection reports that he had physically examined plant components such as fire and flood protection systems, but an NRC investigation found that he nor any other inspector actually looked at those parts. Croon also allowed “days or weeks” to pass between visits to North Anna although as resident inspector he should have been on site “almost daily,” the court documents said.
Croon’s sentencing is scheduled for March 7 of 2022.
“The accuracy of NRC inspection reports is critical to the NRC’s oversight of licensees’ safe operation of nuclear power plants around the nation,” the agency’s Inspector General Robert Feitel said in the press release. “Croon’s false statements could have jeopardized that safety oversight function.”
