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PHOENIX — A trial began Tuesday for an engineer who is accused of illegally taking software from the nation's largest nuclear plant and using it in Iran.

Prosecutors alleged that Mohammad Reza Alavi, then a software engineer at the Palo Verde nuclear plant, broke the U.S. embargo on trade with his native country in 2006 by taking training software from the plant and later downloading codes in Iran that allowed him to open it.

The engineer's attorney conceded that Alavi, a naturalized U.S. citizen, took the software, but never intended to break the law and instead opened up the program out of pride in Iran so his family could see what he did for a living.

The training software was used to simulate the control room at the plant and contained detailed plant information, such as the schematics of its design.

Authorities don't believe the 50-year-old Alavi, who worked at the plant from 1989 until August 2006, intended to provide details of the plant to terrorists.

Plant operators said the unauthorized use of the software didn't pose a security risk because it contained no information on plant security.

Alavi, who was arrested more than a year ago in Los Angeles when he arrived on a flight from Iran, pleaded not guilty to charges of exporting in violation of trade sanctions, transporting stolen goods and computer-related fraud.

Authorities said plant operators had shut down Alavi's access to the software after he resigned, but that the engineer later used his logon to get onto a Web site run by the vendor of the software. Plant operators failed to notify the vendor that the engineer had resigned.

Prosecutor David Pimsner said Alavi was aware of the restrictions placed on doing business with Iran when the Treasury Department sent him a letter in 2001 saying payments he received from a company in Iran were a violation of regulations.

"The evidence of his knowledge, his known legal duty, was established years before" his arrest in the software case, Pimsner said.

David Laufman, attorney for Alavi, said the money was repayment of a loan involving Alavi's brother in Iran.

Laufman said plant operators permitted certain employees to put the simulator software on their personal computers so they could access it from home and other locations.

"The evidence will be completely at odds with the government's notion that Mr. Alavi intended to break the law," Laufman said.

The trial was expected to last three to four weeks.

The Palo Verde Nuclear Generation Station, about 50 miles west of downtown Phoenix, supplies electricity to 4 million customers in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California.