Three arrests fail to solve mystery of drones flying over French nuclear plants
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
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).
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...
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.
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).
As far as I know, in most EU countries, even the security and police forces can't just destroy other people's stuff without a very good reason (and no, an unarmed piece of electronics it not a good enough threat to use firearm in most EU law systems). Firing a firearm is a serious disciplinary matter for a policeman and he has to prove that other people were in IMMEDIATE and SERIOUS danger before they can even pull a gun out of it's holster. About a year ago, the constitutional court in my country (Slovenia) just released a ruling clearly stating that protection of human life (criminal or otherwise) is the primary objective for the police, so they are NOT ALLOWED to even shoot at criminals unless they're defending their own and life of others. Shooting at flying toys is clearly out of the question under such directive and I'm very happy that is so.
Of course I'm serious. Did you miss the part where its buzzing around the nuclear power plant? At the very least that is a designated no fly zone.
Look up "European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection" - its a bit more relevant than your police holster thing.
What's the next step? Issuing shotguns to school security so they'll shoot at children's RC cars that MIGHT carry terrorist explosives?
The plans are public anyway, since the plant was paid by public money.
Are you sure? Wikipedia has a long list of incidents:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_European_Union
>since the plant was paid by public money.
"The plant"? You do realize this happened at 15 plants already? i.e. Someone is systematically doing fly-overs.
Bonus fact: I've been dragged to a police station before for photographing a national key asset - wasn't EU though. All a misunderstand of course... :D
Why does it have to be a firearm? Bean bags from an air cannon would be more than sufficient.
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?
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.
The bullets aren't the issue. Nuclear facilities are usually not built from cardboard & prefab. The size of the drone is more the question - these seem to be smallish ones so it should be reasonably safe to have it drop near the plant.
Or drones that hunt other drones...
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...
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.
(Note: Not entirely serious, but there's something about drones that makes people entirely irrational.)
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)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outward [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_balloon
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.
In addition, the toy helicopter would not be easy to see on radar, especially if it were to fly close to the ground.
When the village of Laerdalsoyri burnt down in Norway in January the emergency services had to ground their own fire fighting helicopters because news drones were a hazard:
> police told Norwegian newspaper VG that a helicopter was being delayed because of suspected media drones taking pictures in the area.
> "It is important for us to stress that if someone is using drones, they must get them out of there," police spokesman Nils Erik Eggen said.
> "This could create a hazardous situation and may pose a danger to helicopters."
> The police could not say how many drones had been operating in the area.
So one could imagine a movie plot terrorist attack where unarmed drones fly over an airport and cause a total shutdown, or in the blockbuster version actually try and intercept a landing airliner.
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.
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.
2) drones don't make anything new possible. They could just as easily use homemade rockets, mortars, old fashioned RC planes, etc. I don't know why people are so afraid of possible abuses of new technology. There are so many old technologies which are also abusable in similar ways, but we don't generally worry about it because it's just not a significant problem.
Gnat vs Elephant. Landing a 747 on one would be a different matter (but they're supposedly prepared against that eventuality too, though I really hope nobody will ever try to see if that really holds up or not).
Am I mistaken?