Last Fall a Drone Swarm Surveilled America's Largest Nuclear Reactor -- Twice (forbes.com)
- Reference: 0134489133
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/08/08/0343249/last-fall-a-drone-swarm-surveilled-americas-largest-nuclear-reactor----twice
- Source link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/07/30/drone-swarm-invaded-palo-verde-nuclear-power-plant/
> Documents gained under the Freedom of Information Act show how [1]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...
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> "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..."
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> 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 [2]military-grade quadcopter recently sold [3]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.
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> The next night events were repeated...
The article notes that two months later America's Nuclear Regulatory Commission "decided [4]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.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/07/30/drone-swarm-invaded-palo-verde-nuclear-power-plant/
[2] https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/indago-vtol-uav.html
[3] https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/lockheed-martin-sells-indago-3-uav-to-switzerland
[4] https://www.ucsusa.org/about/news/nrc-decision-leaves-nuclear-plants-vulnerable-terrorist-drones
All Your Nuclear Power are Ours (Score:2)
Sounds rather like site reconnaissance to me. Casing the joint, if you will
Re: (Score:3)
Well it's not the Russians. Trump already gave them the plans.
Re: All Your Nuclear Power are Ours (Score:1)
Fuck off. This is 1960s technology. It was sold to everyone who cared long before Trump was elected.
hah (Score:3)
> 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.
Not very good spies (Score:4, 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.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
> 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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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.
Last year an article was posted on slashdot--twice (Score:2)
And apparently this year as well...
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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.
Estimated 2 foot in diameter (Score:2)
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:2)
Obviously a U.S. government agency was flying those drones. They had their lights on. The Lockheed drone is "...invisible above 300 feet," yet they flew at or below that height and had their running lights on. Also the NRC concluded nothing should be done. Of course.
Of course a drone can't damage a reactor ... (Score:3)
... 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!
Re: Of course a drone can't damage a reactor ... (Score:2)
> but I imagine a kilo or so of some military grade explosive could cause a bit of a problem
The only problem it could cause is maybe killing a worker or two. Shitty, but certainly not a unique concern in a nuclear plant. I'd be much worried about some snot-nosed socialist using it to assassinate a politician.
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Shaped charge in the right places. 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.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
The control room?
Re: Of course a drone can't damage a reactor ... (Score:2)
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)
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.
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> 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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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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Aren't you more worried about pilot error? Like on the 737-Max.
Re: Of course a drone can't damage a reactor ... (Score:1)
To the morons who modded me off-topic while ignoring the trolling cunt who bated me: fuck you. Slashdot was a far better place before assholes like you showed up. Why the fuck are you even here?
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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:2)
> 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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Well, big aircraft fly over or close by these sites all the time. A Boeing 737 crashing onto it is a more serious possibility.
"..., good job drones can't carry stuff!" (Score:2)
YET!
Re: (Score:1)
Maybe sniffing electronic signals at very specific locations to verify brand and make of equipment would be enough intelligence to engineer an electronic attack?
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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.
Re: (Score:1)
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[1] https://v.ht/o77E