A senior nuclear physicist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee has been arrested on charges of soliciting underage girls for sex chats and explicit videos. Andrew Worrall, 56, director of nuclear energy programs at the facility, was taken into custody on October 6 by agents from the Department of Energy's Office of Inspector General.
According to court documents, Worrall's arrest was prompted by his ex-wife, who alerted authorities after being contacted by a 16-year-old girl he had targeted on Snapchat. The ex-wife, a nuclear nonproliferation researcher at Oak Ridge, told officials that Worrall's fixation on minors contributed to the breakdown of their marriage.
Federal investigators extracted text messages from Worrall's phone in which he allegedly asked the teenager if she could sleep over and referred to himself as a 'dominating daddy.' The girl had told him she was 16. In one exchange, Worrall asked: 'Would you be able to sleep over or no?' and later said, 'Yeah I like to take control. Lead. Dominate totally.'
Worrall was indicted on October 15 on two felony counts: sexual exploitation of a child and enticement. He is no longer working at Oak Ridge, a facility spokeswoman confirmed. It remains unclear if he is still employed by the Department of Energy, which oversees the lab.
Oak Ridge was a key site for the Manhattan Project, which developed the first nuclear bomb during World War II. Worrall had previously won the U.S. Secretary of Energy's Achievement Award in 2021 for his work on safeguarding nuclear material.
