More reports of drones flying near Paolo Verde nuclear power plant, and others, and over spent nuclear fuel storage sites

Dozens More Mystery Drone Incursions Over U.S. Nuclear Power Plants Revealed, Forbes, David Hambling– 7 Sept 20, Forbes recently described how a swarm of drones flew in a restricted area at Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant on two successive nights last September. A new cache of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) reveals how 24 nuclear sites suffered at least 57 drone incursions from 2015 to 2019 – and Palo Verde itself was overflown again in December, despite new security measures.

The documents were obtained by from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission by Douglas D. Johnson on behalf of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU). The SCU’s main interest is in anomalous aerospace phenomena, more commonly known as UFOs, but Johnson uncovered a series of incidents involving something less exotic but potentially more threatening: commercial drones.

In the September incidents, a swarm of five or six large drones flew over Unit 3 nuclear reactor at Palo Verde in Arizona for about eighty minutes, a length of time which suggested they were carrying out a thorough survey of the site. The documents released at the time referred to a similar incident at Limerick Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania………….

We do not know how many involved multiple, simultaneous drone flyovers. At the time the list was generated, three of the incidents were listed as ‘Open’ and five ‘Closed Resolved.’ but the overwhelming majority, 49 of them, were ‘Closed Unresolved.’ This indicates that for 85% of the cases the NRC has no idea who the perpetrators are or what they intended, and has given up on finding them………

Limerick had five drone sightings, Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Cleveland, Ohio had six and Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo in California had no less than seven separate incidents from December 2015 to September 2018, all of them unresolved. The scale spread and number of intrusions indicate that this is not a local issue, and that the drone overflight may be carried out by a large, coordinated organization.

While most of the sites were nuclear reactors, there were also three drone incursions over spent nuclear fuel storage sites, including Trojan in Oregon and Rancho Seco in California where radioactive waste is stored in steel canisters inside giant concrete casks………..

While reactors themselves are protected by thick concrete domes able to withstand the impact of a crashing airliner, the above-ground pools in which spend nuclear fuel is stored may be far more vulnerable. A 2011 report by the Institute of Policy Studies noted that over 40,000 tons of highly radioactive waste is stored in pools, many above ground: “some of the largest concentrations of radioactive material on the planet.” These pools are not heavily protected, but are in light structures similar to big-box stores and car dealerships.

A 2003 report noted how vulnerable such pools were to terrorist action, simply by making a hole in the pool to drain out the cooling water and causing the stored fuel to overheat: “We warned that U.S. spent fuel pools were vulnerable to acts of terror. The drainage of a pool might cause a catastrophic radiation fire, which could render an area uninhabitable much greater than that created by the Chernobyl accident.”

Robert Alvarez, author of the 2003 and 211 reports, reiterated the danger from terrorist attacks on fuel pools in 2017…………. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/09/07/dozens-more-drone-incursions-over-us-nuclear-power-plants-revealed/#77285c0a6296

September 8, 2020 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | incidents, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA

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