
Three arrests fail to solve mystery of drones flying over French nuclear plants - nnx
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/06/arrests-myster-drones-flying-french-nuclear-plants
======
Perseids
The absurdity of nuclear plant safety: The risk of a disasters is "completely
negligible", but fly a model plane or drone above a plant and all hell breaks
loose.

You can't have it both ways: _Either_ scenarios with attackers flying Cessnas
full of fertilizer into your facility etc. are a safety danger and the plants
need to be reinforced immediately _or_ drones above your plant are completely
harmless and should not be prosecuted anymore than drones flying above the
house of a celebrity. And if these plants are not safe, then shooting drones
from the sky and imprisoning drone pilots will not change that fact.

 _Edit_ : I've added quotes around "completely negligible" to make clear I was
citing public opinion rather than presenting my own (@quonn).

~~~
quonn
Actually, the risk of disasters is not negligible at all, in particular if
there is a sufficient number of power plants (431 worldwide currently).

In the last 30 years, we have already seen two incidents that were above the
"maximum credible accident", that is the probability of them happening was
considered to be negligible.

With that number of plants running, I would expect a major incident
_somewhere_ every 20 years and historically we have seen more than that.

Here [0] is a quite recent study by probably the most important german
research institute that predicts one incident every 10 to 20 years, based on
the number of plants running and data of historical incidents. There is also a
nice summary in German [1].

[0] [http://www.atmos-chem-
phys.net/12/4245/2012/acp-12-4245-2012...](http://www.atmos-chem-
phys.net/12/4245/2012/acp-12-4245-2012.html)

[1]
[http://www.mpic.de/index.php?id=34298&type=0](http://www.mpic.de/index.php?id=34298&type=0)

~~~
izacus
What does that have to do with drones flying over powerplants?

I agree in general, but here the response to what is essentially a toy flying
over a concrete several meters thick bunker is just crazy.

~~~
quonn
Nothing, my comment was not about the drones. - I was responding to the parent
commenter, before he or she put "completely negligible" in quotes.

~~~
Perseids
Thanks for those articles, btw. They provide interesting data points in the
(somewhat endless) safety debate.

------
Havoc
Just shoot them down?

Its an unauthorized vehicle over key infrastructure. Wouldn't even result in a
loss of lives. So shoot it down & wait for the owner to start bitching (or
not).

~~~
csours
What goes up, must come down. [1]

You could make sure your security forces understand exactly where they can
shoot, but still, is it worth the risk to have bullets falling somewhere in a
nuclear facility?

1\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire)

~~~
izacus
My point is disproportionate response. A drone is nowhere near a security risk
that would require a shooting response.

Same as we're not using SAM sites to shoot down Cessnas that accidentaly
blunder into no-fly zones over airports, powerplants and other bases just
because they MIGHT (and in 99.9999999999999999999999+% cases they're not)
cause some damage.

I'm very very concerned just how the terrorist scare is trying to turn our
countries into police states ruled by fear.

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mschuster91
It doesn't even need a real firearm or explosive to threaten a power plant.

A 32 mm² copper wire with ~3m length is enough to cause a short in the high-
voltage section. Two or three RC aircraft at the same time and you can
potentially cause something like Fukushima by totally separating the plant
from the grid and hoping that its UPS is broken...

edit: every HV installation and even most middle-level (5-50 kV) installation
can also be targeted by this. Left-wing radicals are already burning cable
trenches of the train service in order to protest against nuclear power (I'm
serious, this happened yesterday in East Germany), it's only a matter of time
unless one of these fools tries a cable-equipped UAV against a HV distribution
station...

~~~
robryk
I take issue with the statement that depriving a plant of line power and
having a UPS failure will "cause something like Fukushima". An important
factor in the Fukushima accident was the infeasibility of quickly (within a
day or so) providing equipment to the plant due to the catastrophe everywhere
around.

~~~
mschuster91
If coordinated enough, a sudden and unexpected total load drop on the whole
power station may cause total mayhem due to turbine runaway; combined with a
total loss of grid energy due to every grid HV connection being blown I am not
sure if plant ops may be able to keep cooling up.

These things are very rarely tested in production (esp. turbine containments).
Right now we're just sitting there and pretend there are no terrorists or
political extremists. We're rather like sitting ducks waiting for potshots.

------
andor
I worry more about the general safety of French (Swiss, German, ...) nuclear
plants than these "drones". I guess it's some environmental group flying
quadrocopters with sensors over the plants to make independent measurements.

~~~
newaccountfool
Why just French, Swiss and German? RC aircraft can be flown over anything, I
doubt the US or UK have any better protection from RC Aircraft than the
French, Swiss or Germans.

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audessuscest
For the french : [http://nos-medias.fr/video/drones-l-hypothese-
inquietante-d-...](http://nos-medias.fr/video/drones-l-hypothese-inquietante-
d-un-expert-en-energie-nucleaire)

He explain that they may want to target transformer station and could shutdown
all electric network in europe, yes that's scary

Edit: i put the right link... the first one was just a report of the incident
(sorry)

~~~
robryk
This is not a new idea: the British[1] tried using balloons with trailing
wires during World War II (in the hope they'll short power lines). As far as I
can recall (I can't find a source right now) the Japanese put lots of copper
wires in their fire balloons[2] too, to hopefully cause a short when they
explode.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outward](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outward)
[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_balloon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_balloon)

------
Icybee
Maybe security UAVs could be an answer?

If an unknown drone appears over a nuclear power plant, the plant could launch
a UAV to follow it about until it goes home, watch who picks it up after it
lands, and then just send in the police.

~~~
justincormack
It is somewhat unclear why they have failed to follow them with helicopters,
did they just lose them? It is unclear if these are day or night flights
though.

~~~
astrobe_
This was a silly, unprepared answer anyway, just like the order to shoot them
down. They've probably setup radio scanners and possibly jammers in order to
intercept the video/command stream.

~~~
lsaferite
This is one I fail to understand.

With radio triangulation that should be able to pinpoint the controller. I
know most of the newer control equipment is using spread spectrum and
frequency hopping, but I imagine that is a solvable issue.

~~~
robryk
And they have to proceed to that point quickly enough to find the fellow
operating it still there. Also, if I wished to avoid detection, I'd set up a
transceiver linked to a data GSM connection and leave it in a random place in
the middle of nowhere. Maybe even I'd have a few of those to confuse direction
finding attempts (not sure how feasible that is).

~~~
lsaferite
Well, I would hope every nuclear power station has a rapid reaction security
force on hand 24/7 the could respond to these 'threats'.

As for the misdirection, using cellular relay devices is something most
wouldn't do and even if they did it would provide a lead that could be
followed.

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newaccountfool
These RC Aircraft will be almost impossible to track if set up correctly.
Using Jamming devices would be stupid as it would block out mobile phone
frequencys and you would need a strong enough jammer to block high flying
aircraft. Even if the vehicle was jammed it would just fly home, but who says
that home is where the controllers are, some of these aircraft can do 80km+
flights...It's not an easy issue to fix.

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danbruc
How much damage could you do by loading a drone with aluminium foil stripes
and dropping this onto the electrical equipment? Would it just evaporate
before causing much harm? Are the distances you have to short to large for
bringing the needed material with drones? Of course this is neither limited to
nuclear plants nor to drones.

------
smoyer
"But ... I don't even own a drone!"

------
ExpiredLink
The solution is anti-drone drones!

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notastartup
This is scary! What if the drone carried an explosive, landed on the nuclear
plants and detonated? I shudder at the thought. There should be a camera with
360 vision that constantly monitors the surrounding area for incoming
projectiles and drones and shoot laser or bullets at it.

~~~
icebraining
On the other hand, this has been possible for decades using RC planes (let
alone regular planes).

~~~
jotm
The new electric quadcopters are like the first iPhone - people think it's an
all new invention, when in fact we've had marvelous gas-powered RC helicopters
for a long time.

~~~
lsaferite
Quadcopters seem to be the platform that drove the highly advanced flight
computers that allow anyone to fly the things. When I take my FCs out of acro
mode even my 4 year old can fly them and not crash. They are being used on
more platforms now, but the quads seems to be in the news as the front
runners.

