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67 reports, 28 nuclear facilities: records released on drone sightings over U.S. nuclear power plants

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67 reports from the U.S. nuclear regulator have been made public about drones that were sighted over nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities between 2024 and 2026, in 17 states. One of the cases occurred near Langley Air Force Base, where a drone flew over both reactor buildings. According to the records, none of the cases was resolved.

Following a freedom of information request

Two journalists at the British online outlet Liberation Times, Christopher Sharp and Kyle Warfel, obtained the log of drone-related reports held by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The outlet published the results on October 7.

The log contains 67 reports between February 1, 2024 and March 25, 2026, from 28 nuclear facilities in 17 states. The reports were filed by the plants themselves, as required by regulations, when they detected an unauthorized drone near or over their site. Every entry was marked "Closed Unresolved," although some of the descriptions state that the matter is still open due to an internal investigation. The outlet was also unable to explain this contradiction.

The most important cases

Surry, Virginia. Five reports came in during December 2024. On December 17, a drone flew over both reactor buildings. The plant is about 30 km from Langley Air Force Base, where unknown drones flew for weeks in December 2023, and where the Pentagon recorded 113 drone detections with a counter-drone system in December 2024. According to the outlet, these are not necessarily separate aircraft, and they cannot be directly linked to the Surry reports.
Hope Creek, New Jersey. On December 13 and 14, 2024 – during the New Jersey drone wave – some of the drones were the size of a small car, according to the observers.
Millstone, Connecticut. Seven drones on December 14, and the next morning a V-shaped drone over a reactor building.
River Bend, Louisiana. Ten reports, the most from a single site, including about five drones on January 6, 2025.
Prairie Island, Minnesota. Four drones in January 2025, two of which crossed the protected area twice.
Diablo Canyon, California. On October 25, 2024, an aircraft remained over the protected area for about five minutes.
Nuclear Fuel Services, Tennessee. This plant produces fuel for U.S. Navy reactors. Four drones were sighted on May 23, 2025.
Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. One drone on February 9, 2026.
Byron, Illinois. Drone activity on March 24–25, 2026, lasting until 1:30 a.m.

Some of the reports explicitly record that the incident was not considered suspicious. At the same time, in an earlier article the outlet also reported on a triangular object equipped with a searchlight over a nuclear facility.

What the records do not contain

The reports do not identify who was operating the drones or for what purpose. They also say little about what was found out after the reports were filed. What the records show, then, is that drones regularly appear over nuclear facilities, and that in many cases the authorities were unable to find out whose they were.

The sober take

This is not UFO news in the sense in which many people use the word. The records refer to "drones," meaning the observers mostly recognized that these were small unmanned aircraft. "Unresolved" means the operator was not found, not that unknown technology is involved.

The December 2024 wave. Most of the cases fall in December 2024 and January 2025, when there was a mass drone panic in New Jersey and on the East Coast. In early 2025, the U.S. government stated that most of the New Jersey sightings could be traced to authorized drones, hobbyists' aircraft and airplanes. During the panic, the number of reports jumped everywhere, because people were simply watching the sky more closely.
A real security issue. Regardless, the phenomenon is serious. Using drones to spy, conduct reconnaissance or even test a facility's response is not difficult, and for a long time U.S. authorities had limited powers to counter drones. Because of the 2023 incidents around Langley, the topic is also on the agenda of the Pentagon and Congress.
Why does it end up on UFO sites? Because some drone incidents are also counted among UAPs, that is, unidentified aerial phenomena, and because "lights" over nuclear facilities have long been a recurring theme in UFO literature. Here, however, the documents currently point to a security question rather than a mysterious one.

In summary: important, document-based news about a real security problem. It proves nothing about extraterrestrials, but it does show that even over critical facilities it is often impossible to find out who is flying the drones.

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