Last Fall a Drone Swarm Surveilled America's Largest Nuclear Reactor -- Twice (forbes.com) 114
America's Nuclear Regulatory Commission honored a document request from a UFO group — which has inadvertently revealed a very real incident last fall at America's largest nuclear reactor in Arizona, reports Forbes:
Documents gained under the Freedom of Information Act show how a number of small drones flew around a restricted area at Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant on two successive nights last September. Security forces watched, but were apparently helpless to act as the drones carried out their incursions before disappearing into the night. Details of the event gives some clues as to just what they were doing, but who sent them remains a mystery...
"Officer noticed several drones (5 or 6) flying over the site. The drones are circling the 3 unit site inside and outside the Protected Area. The drones have flashing red and white lights and are estimated to be 200 to 300 feet above the site. It was reported the drones had spotlights on while approaching the site that they turned off when they entered the Security Owner Controlled Area..."
The drones departed at 22:30, eighty minutes after they were first spotted. The security officers estimated that they were over two feet in diameter. This indicates that they were not simply consumer drones like the popular DJI Phantom, which have a flight endurance of about half an hour and is about a foot across, but something larger and more capable. The Lockheed Martin Indago, a military-grade quadcopter recently sold to the Swiss Army, has a flight endurance of about seventy minutes and is more than two feet across. At several thousand dollars apiece minimum, these are far less expendable than consumer drones costing a few hundred. All of which suggests this was not just a prank.
The next night events were repeated...
The article notes that two months later America's Nuclear Regulatory Commission "decided not to require drone defenses at nuclear plants, asserting that small drones could not damage a reactor or steal nuclear material. It is highly likely that such sites are still vulnerable to drone overflights."
The article also notes that this reactor supplies electricity to major American cities including Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, and Tucson.
"Officer noticed several drones (5 or 6) flying over the site. The drones are circling the 3 unit site inside and outside the Protected Area. The drones have flashing red and white lights and are estimated to be 200 to 300 feet above the site. It was reported the drones had spotlights on while approaching the site that they turned off when they entered the Security Owner Controlled Area..."
The drones departed at 22:30, eighty minutes after they were first spotted. The security officers estimated that they were over two feet in diameter. This indicates that they were not simply consumer drones like the popular DJI Phantom, which have a flight endurance of about half an hour and is about a foot across, but something larger and more capable. The Lockheed Martin Indago, a military-grade quadcopter recently sold to the Swiss Army, has a flight endurance of about seventy minutes and is more than two feet across. At several thousand dollars apiece minimum, these are far less expendable than consumer drones costing a few hundred. All of which suggests this was not just a prank.
The next night events were repeated...
The article notes that two months later America's Nuclear Regulatory Commission "decided not to require drone defenses at nuclear plants, asserting that small drones could not damage a reactor or steal nuclear material. It is highly likely that such sites are still vulnerable to drone overflights."
The article also notes that this reactor supplies electricity to major American cities including Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, and Tucson.
Of course a drone can't damage a reactor ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... but I imagine a kilo or so of some military grade explosive could cause a bit of a problem, good job drones can't carry stuff!
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FAA has issued a NOTAM (FDC 1/1763) prohibiting all General Aviation flights within a 10 nautical mile radius and below 18,000 feet of 86 nuclear sites throughout the United States.
"..., good job drones can't carry stuff!" (Score:2)
YET!
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640x480 explosives? Or full HD explosives? The Lockheed Martin website does say it comes with a high resolution payload so presumably the explosion will look very good.
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The thing they excel at is transmitting information. If you wanted to storm the reactor and overwhelm the security forces, a drone could give you information that an aerial photo couldn't.
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Honestly, no, it can't.
I mean sure, it could kill someone, or blow up a control console, or shatter some windows, break some (trivial) piping/wiring...but contrary to Hollywood, laying C4 atop something - particularly something even slightly hard like steel - ends up doing little more than scorching/denting it.
While I certainly would be concerned about people gathering intel on such sites uninvestigated, the idea that a small drone even carrying explosives could do any meaningful damage is largely true. Th
Indeed. A couple pounds won't do shit (Score:2)
The smallest bomb in the US inventory weighs 285 pounds. It's used to hit things like fuel tanks.
The UAV mentioned in the summary, costing "several thousand dollars each, minimum" has a maximum payload of 5 pounds, or 2 kilograms.
The large consumer-grade fireworks are 2.2 pounds, 1 kilogram. You'll see them labeled as "500 gram class" because it's assumed that 1kg total weight is 500 grams of cardboard + 500 grams of explosive.
The maximum payload of these UAVs would be twice the size of a fireworks stand
Of course RDX is 2-3 times "stronger" (Score:2)
I should mention, the RDX explosive used by the military has 2-3X higher "relative effectiveness factor", or TNT equivalent, than fireworks explosive does.
Still, FEMA says 20 pounds of TNT (a 40 pound bomb) will break glass windows up to 40 feet away. A five pound bomb? It might break glass 5 feet away or so. Fortunately, nuclear reactor containment buildings aren't made of 1/4" glass.
Re: Of course a drone can't damage a reactor ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Of course a drone can't damage a reactor ... (Score:2)
there are plenty of other important structures that can be damaged, forcing the reactor offline.
Forcing a reactor offline is a minor nuisance unless you can do it to all reactors in the country at once. But even ignoring that, please, tell me which important building could be taken out with 1 kg of explosives and lead to a shutdown of the reactor.
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The control room?
Re: Of course a drone can't damage a reactor ... (Score:1)
Hog, you're too stupid to be taken seriously. No sane person believes that you can fly a drone into the control room.
Re: Of course a drone can't damage a reactor ... (Score:2)
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Re: Of course a drone can't damage a reactor ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy. The HT transformers outside the building. Custom made, no spares, months offline. Still, no need for a drone, a few hits with a 50 cal would do the trick.
Re: Of course a drone can't damage a reactor .. (Score:2)
Easy. The HT transformers outside the building. Custom made, no spares, months offline. Still, no need for a drone, a few hits with a 50 cal would do the trick.
Fair. I'm not sure that 1 kg of explosives would do the trick, but yeah, that's the weak point. Now you only need to hit the majority of the 98 nuke plants in the US at once, and you will really inconvinience a bunch of people.
Meanwhile thanks to your 50 cal comment you've also demonstrated that this isn't a risk that's unique to drone attacks.
Re: Of course a drone can't damage a reactor ... (Score:4, Interesting)
A .50 cal has an effective range of about two miles maximum.
Off-the shelf camera quadcopters have up to 8km (5mi) range.
In addition, they can be set up, walked away from, and then launched... which means you can't trivially trace back to the pilots.
They can also attack from above.
It might still make more sense to use a mortar than a drone. A mortar has similar range to a quadcopter.
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You might not find law enforcement so tolerant of a drone with a shaped charge on its belly. Of course, they might well (to be fair, almost certainly) not recognize it, but a mortar can be disguised as something else, too.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Of course a drone can't damage a reactor ... (Score:2)
But...morters have horrendous accuracy.
OK with a mortar you can devastate a wide area if you have enough time and projectiles, but you cannot guarantee a materiel kill. It's an inaccurate blunt instrument. With a deuce you absolutely can hit what you're aiming to destroy. Also you can't jam the signal or shoot it down...
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But...morters have horrendous accuracy.
I've made the same argument "for" drone weaponry. Part of the appeal of the Tomahawk missile for example is that it's good at hitting its targets. A cheap drone can operate with the same level of precision for a lot less money, albeit with a lot less capacity, and a lot less range.
With a deuce you absolutely can hit what you're aiming to destroy.
Sure. But now shot triangulation makes that hazardous.
Also you can't jam the signal or shoot it down...
First you make a recon flight, then you choose a target, then you send in the bomb drones.
I was half-joking about the mortar. I'd have thought there were smart mortar projectil
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A drone could carry miles of carbon fiber (Score:2)
https://cyberarms.wordpress.co... [wordpress.com]
Re: Of course a drone can't damage a reactor ... (Score:4)
The connection to the grid ...
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Why the would you need to down them all at once? Wouldn't downing a few do enough to a grid to the point where there'd be serious outages? And remember the country is split into 3 grids. And no, I don't expect you could do it with 1kg.
Re: Of course a drone can't damage a reactor ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea isn't to "destroy" the reinforced concrete containment building, but there are plenty of other important structures that can be damaged, forcing the reactor offline.
I would guess that the idea is to cause mayhem and panic.
When the news breaks that the nuclear plant was hit by a drone attack, but there is "no danger of a radiation leak" . . . folks are going to skedaddle away from the place in a totally chaotic fashion.
That will be the real disruption.
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For bonus points sprinkle low grade radioactive material as the drone flies to the target, giving people some "emissions" to detect.
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At worst, a drone can kill itself by flying into the transformer yard, that might trigger a temporary shutdown of the plant, at worst, to put out fires and repair the transformer connections.
At best, these are spy/mapping activities and should probably be considered potentially threatening. Like what if a drone was trying to find the exact coordinates of the cooling tower so that a much larger payload could be dropped on it at a later date? It would be pretty lame if a drone dropped something into the cooli
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A $100 drone can carry a grenade. I've built one big enough (though not for that purpose) for that cost before. Or it could carry a shaped charge, instead. Or a nice chunk of thermite. Etc etc.
A multi-thousand dollar drone of this size can carry enough payload to really do some damage.
Re: Of course a drone can't damage a reactor ... (Score:2)
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Aren't you more worried about pilot error? Like on the 737-Max.
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Fly the drones up above the rather obvious chimneys - or whatever those big things the steam comes out of are called. Dive straight down. Detonate C4 at the bottom. At the VERY least you're looking at some problematic repairs even if there's no nuclear breach.
Re: Of course a drone can't damage a reactor ... (Score:3, Informative)
Fly the drones up above the rather obvious chimneys - or whatever those big things the steam comes out of are called.
They're called Cooling Towers.
Dive straight down. Detonate C4 at the bottom. At the VERY least you're looking at some problematic repairs even if there's no nuclear breach.
And this is why average people make shitty terrorists. Detonating a kg of explosives in a cooling tower (ESPECIALLY at the bottom) would just cause a lot of security people to get very excited for a while. Meanwhile the nuke plant would keep humming along as normal.
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Let's hope terrorists trying to overthrow the evil capitalist heathen pigs are as disinterested in how to blow up a nuclear power plant as I am, then.
Re: Of course a drone can't damage a reactor ... (Score:2)
On that we can agree wholeheartedly.
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hahaha, you are so ignorant of explosives and nuclear engineering. Nothing would happen. The amount of HE a drone carries couldn't do anything and the towers aren't essential. Why don't you learn about those cooling towers that you don't even know the name of.
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Are you seriously encouraging me to start studying how to properly blow up a nuclear power plant?
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I'd be much worried about some snot-nosed socialist using it to assassinate a politician.
Just pretend it's a 3D-printed gun and don't worry about it!
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just imagine if it had been these drones ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
this is our future
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Actually no, because he's not worried about those types killing the politicians he wants to keep alive.
All Your Nuclear Power are Ours (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds rather like site reconnaissance to me. Casing the joint, if you will
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Well it's not the Russians. Trump already gave them the plans.
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Right, because none of the security, or infrastructure, or technology used in nuclear power generation has changed since the 60s.
If I rolled by eyes any harder right now, it would disconnect my optic nerves.
hah (Score:2, Insightful)
The article notes that two months later America's Nuclear Regulatory Commission "decided not to require drone defenses at nuclear plants, asserting that small drones could not damage a reactor or steal nuclear material. It is highly likely that such sites are still vulnerable to drone overflights."
Sure. And they're still vulnerable to people standing on a nearby building with a camera. So what? Nuke plants aren't some top secret project which we need to protect from spies. Most of them are 1960s technology; not exactly high-tech shit for foreigners to steal.
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The article notes that two months later America's Nuclear Regulatory Commission "decided not to require drone defenses at nuclear plants, asserting that small drones could not damage a reactor or steal nuclear material. It is highly likely that such sites are still vulnerable to drone overflights."
Sure. And they're still vulnerable to people standing on a nearby building with a camera. So what? Nuke plants aren't some top secret project which we need to protect from spies. Most of them are 1960s technology; not exactly high-tech shit for foreigners to steal.
Technology we've already sold overseas, including China.
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Or any normal conventional weaponary from the same decades as the facility. You can probably get quite a few RPGs for the price of that drone and take a few shots from 1/2 a km. Yeah, people need to stop seeing so many movies. You are not going to decimate a nuclear facility with even a tank or 1-2 missiles from a jet. Damage it, sure.
For the US, the biggest return for a terrorist would be the public fear and political noise... both would cause more disruption to society well after the site was fixed up
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Sure. And they're still vulnerable to people standing on a nearby building with a camera.
Where are there buildings nearby nuke plants which are tall enough to get the equivalent of aerial reconnaissance photos?
Not very good spies (Score:5, Insightful)
The drones have flashing red and white lights and are estimated to be 200 to 300 feet above the site.
If you were trying to be stealthy, you should probably disable those first.
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Hard to be stealthy anyway with the amount of noise the propellors on drones make.
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Hard to be stealthy anyway with the amount of noise the propellors on drones make.
For consumer garbage yes, but fancy expensive drones used for surveillance, military, and film production are pretty damn quiet. e.g. the one linked in TFS is advertised as undetectable at 300ft.
Re: Not very good spies (Score:1)
Every drone is undetectable at similar distances.
Look, any time you have a vehicle held aloft by propellers, it's going to be fucking loud. That's just physics. This is why everyone laughed at the "stealth helicopters" which were used to kill Bin Laden. The difference being that the "stealth" on those helicopters was meant to fool radar, and not people on the ground hearing them roar overhead. There are certainly things you can do to make them slightly less loud, but nothing you do is ever going to make
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Every drone is undetectable at similar distances.
Ahhh I forgot, every drone sounds completely the same and has 100% identical noise signature.
For those of you who don't understand decibels no, given the volume and distances involved even having a dB or two difference in noise at will wildly change what at what distance a drone is detectable.
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A 12% increase in distance causes a 1 dB drop in volume. Is that a wild change? How does it compare to the listener's angle relative to the body of the drone?
Re: Not very good spies (Score:1)
Ahhh I forgot, every drone sounds completely the same and has 100% identical noise signature.
Nah, you didn't forget, you're just being a disingenuous cunt by ignoring the fact that I used the word "similar".
For those of you who don't understand decibels no, given the volume and distances involved even having a dB or two difference in noise at will wildly change what at what distance a drone is detectable.
Yes, "wildly" as in "my drone is now only detectable at 300 feet instead of 350!". Big fucking whoop. As if we don't have lenses which can make the extra 50 feet completely irrelevant.
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Yes, "wildly" as in "my drone is now only detectable at 300 feet instead of 350!". Big fucking whoop. As if we don't have lenses which can make the extra 50 feet completely irrelevant.
It sounds like you just like to make baseless comments as facts and then get mad when someone corrects them. 50 foot can make a HUGE difference. 99% of drones do not have zoom lenses. Zooming with a fixed lens requires moving closer or further away. 50 foot can dramatically raise the noise level! (Again, I fly drones and have actual experience here.)
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Stealthy helicopters are not quiet if you're standing underneath them. But they are quiet if they're behind a hill. Given that existing attack helicopters carry missiles large enough to kill a tank with a single hit (Hellfires) that's still pretty stealthy. Especially since Hellfires can home on a target that someone else has designated... They can "pop" up over the hill, launch a missile, and drop back below it before anyone has even figured out where it is.
Drones, on the other hand, don't have to gain all
Re: Not very good spies (Score:4, Informative)
Every drone is undetectable at similar distances.
Not true. I have flown and owned several drones, including building one from scratch. I can 100% debunk this claim. A DJI phantom 3 at 400 feet can easily be heard on an average day. They are very noisy. The Inspire drones made for filming are far quieter at 400 feet and you'd really need to be paying attention to hear it.
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If you've got multiple people flying the drones in formation, which is the only way I can imagine accurately handling six drones at once, those drones should probably be able to see each other. Turning off the spotlights makes it harder for a guard on the ground to pinpoint the individual drones with a firearm but make it clear to the other drone handlers through cameras where not to fly.
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If you've got multiple people flying the drones in formation, which is the only way I can imagine accurately handling six drones at once, those drones should probably be able to see each other. Turning off the spotlights makes it harder for a guard on the ground to pinpoint the individual drones with a firearm but make it clear to the other drone handlers through cameras where not to fly.
It occurs to me that a set of six drones could maintain a formation by using some kind of laser system to network the drones together so they know where each other are. If you have only two drones, this won't help much with maintaining distancing between drones. If you have three or more and can measure the relative angles, you could maintain a decent enough formation. But that leaves the question of why you would want to fly a flight of these things in formation in the first place. About the only reason I
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Controlled by one person https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Last year an article was posted on slashdot--twice (Score:2)
And apparently this year as well...
Re:Pussies (Score:4, Insightful)
Shotguns are generally standard armament for security personal anywhere and good luck hitting something that small, high up and moving in the dark with a pistol or even a rifle without a sight. Plus if they did bring one down there's a good chance it could land on some electrical infrastructure and cause serious damage or even a short.
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Shotguns are NOT generally standard I meant to say obv.
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Estimated 2 foot in diameter (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder what they base their estimate of the drone size on? Estimating the size of an object in the air is notoriously hard.
If the distance estimate of '200 or 300 feet' is accurate, that would leave the possible range of sizes for the drone pretty wide.
Obviously (Score:1)
Damage, nope. Reconnaisance, YES. (Score:3)
Considering all the shit going on in the world and in this country, the possibilities don't make me feel very warm and fuzzy.
Of course the purpose could be precisely the above: scare tactic, make us think someone is planning an attack of some sort on that reactor facility. Otherwise why repeat it the next night? Make sure the drones were seen and reported.
Another possibility, less likely: proof-of-concept of some sort.
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Your prior post was very good. This one was ridiculous. Shooting targets overhead is very difficult at the best of times. At that range you have very little hope of hitting a moving target with a pistol, a rifle would be too dangerous (what goes up...) And if the guards have shotguns, they're not choked for range.
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Your best bet would be to fire up a GPS jammer and hope the drone falls back to "hover" mode. Unfortunately jammers are highly illegal but being illegal never stopped Uncle Sam from doing anything.
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Who knows? (Score:2)
So much for NAT. security with trump admin (Score:2)
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outdoor exposed piping? have you ever worked in a nuke plant? no, little hobbyist drones can't do shit against the cooling.
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St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant in the 90's [google.com]
and
Fort St. Vrain Generating Station in late 80s (which had a thin skin, NOT a concrete cover. Reason why is that it was one of the few thorium-u reactors every put into production and would have done just fine). [google.com]
and
Zion nuclear power plant in 1972. [google.com]
Both zion and hutchinson had their cooling pipe openings right at ground level.
When we used to fish off of Zion (the warm water attracted a lot of coho) in our boat, we could s
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inside the cooling intakes which would be five meter or more diameter is a heavy grating, no drone is getting in. and no hobbyist drone carrying HE is going to do jack shit to it.
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And I am not suggesting that they go up the pipe. I am saying that stopping the water right at the pump=house is where it would likely happen.
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I did read, two foot diameter drone is still a tiny chickenshit drone that can't carry anything that could do damage, it's for camera only. the plant where I was scheduler had concrete pillbox for a pump house and water treatment plant even more robust, what kind of wooden shack are you talking about?
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for hobbyist drones trivial (Score:3)
200 to 300 feet is well within the range of 12 gauge magnum loads. the security already have submachine guns, why not add semi-auto shotguns to what they carry. Use searchlights for night. And for those wondering, the shot return to earth at a very small fraction of muzzle velocity, only annoying not injuring.
9/11 (Score:2)
If there's one thing I've learned, it's that the enemy will _never_, _ever_ do shit you didn't think about and cause massive damage. Where did I learn this? 9/11.
Can you imagine being a time traveler trying to convince these morons what would happen that morning?