By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel

An East Tennessean who served as a senior manager in the Tennessee Valley Authority's nuclear program swapped information with one of China's top nuclear power companies in exchange for cash, according to federal court records unsealed Thursday.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Knoxville on Thursday announced an espionage conspiracy indictment against China General Nuclear Power, Chinese nuclear engineer Szuhsiung "Allen" Ho, and Ho's firm, Energy Technology International. Prosecutors said Ho conspired with the companies to lure nuclear experts in the U.S. into providing information to allow China to develop and produce nuclear material based on American technology and under the radar of the U.S. government.

Ho was taken into custody in Atlanta on Thursday afternoon and will be returned to U.S. District Court in Knoxville to face the two-count indictment. The indictment consists of one count of conspiracy to illegally engage and participate in the production and development of special nuclear material outside the U.S. and one count of conspiracy to act in the U.S. as an agent of a foreign government.

PDF: U.S. nuclear engineer, China General Muclear Power Company and Energy Technology International indicted in nuclear power conspiracy against the United States

"Allen Ho, at the direction of a Chinese state-owned nuclear power company, allegedly approached and enlisted U.S. based nuclear experts to provide integral assistance in developing and producing special nuclear material in China," Assistant Attorney General for National Security John P. Carlin said in a news release. "Ho did so without registering with the Department of Justice as an agent of a foreign nation or authorization from the U.S. Department of Energy. Prosecuting those who seek to evade U.S. law by attaining sensitive nuclear technology for foreign nations is a top priority for the National Security Division."

Among the six unidentified American co-conspirators listed in the indictment is a person labeled "U.S. Person 1," described as the TVA senior manager for the probabilistic risk assessment in the Nuclear Power Group from April 2010 to September 2014. The TVA executive was born in Taiwan and became a naturalized citizen in 1990, according to the indictment. A payment by Ho to the TVA executive was sent to Chattanooga, according to the indictment.

The TVA executive had the same role with the Florida Power & Light company before joining TVA and met Ho through the Chinese American Nuclear Technology Association in the early 1990s, according to the indictment. The executive's gender is not specified.

The indictment alleges Ho "entered into contracts with" the TVA executive and "other U.S.-based experts to provide assistance to" the Chinese-owned nuclear power company — one of the three largest in China — related to the "development and production of special nuclear material" in the People's Republic of China.

According to the indictment, the TVA executive provided Ho with Florida Power & Light "information regarding nuclear power plant outage times" in 2004 for use at China General's Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant and provided consulting services to Daya Bay during that time.

The TVA executive in 2013 used TVA ties to access the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute and provided China General with the nonprofit's reports on nuclear power that were supposed to be restricted to members of the research firm, according to the indictment.

The TVA executive traveled to China in November 2013 "to provide nuclear consulting" to China General and provided reports on fuel reliability for new nuclear plant design, technology innovation and a method to predict damage in power plant piping.

In December 2015, Ho sent the TVA executive a check to a Chattanooga address totaling $15,555 for services in 2013 and 2014, according to the indictment.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Atchley, who is spearheading the prosecution, is not required to list every act alleged as part of the conspiracy, so the full scope of the TVA executive's involvement is not yet known.

The indictment lists five other Americans as participating in the espionage conspiracy. They, too, are identified only by state of residency and job description. Four worked at the same Pennsylvania-based nuclear firm, which is not identified in the indictment, while the fifth worked for a Colorado-based firm that supplied technical support to the nuclear power industry. That firm also is not identified.

All five were engineers. Two were nuclear engineers living in Pennsylvania. Two lived in South Carolina, with one of those experts born in China before becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen. The fifth lived in Colorado. All were paid for providing Ho and China General with key information on various aspects of the production of special nuclear material — plutonium, uranium-233 and enriched uranium — according to the indictment.

Authorities did not say Thursday whether the engineers face prosecution or have struck deals to cooperate.

The indictment alleges the conspiracy spanned from 1997 to this month. The purpose was to "secure an advantage to China." Ho told the engineers that "China has the budget to spend" and needed help so "China will be able to design their nuclear instrumentation system independently and manufacture them independently after the project is completed," according to an email from Ho cited in the indictment.

The espionage count carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. According to a release, the FBI headed up the probe along with TVA's Office of the Inspector General, the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations.