Newly Released Records Reveal Drone Incursions, Including Triangular Object With Spotlight, Above U.S. Nuclear Sites
Above: Columbia Generating Station, Washington
Written by Kyle Warfel and Christopher Sharp - 8 April 2026
Liberation Times has obtained records detailing drone incidents around sensitive U.S. nuclear facilities. The documents point to a spate of activity around critical infrastructure between September 2022 and February 2023.
Among the most striking cases is an incident at the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station in Pennsylvania - a nuclear plant - where a triangular object appearing to carry a large spotlight was reported within the site’s airspace and perimeter for more than two hours.
The material, provided by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) under the Freedom of Information Act, relates to records the NRC sent to the Pentagon’s dedicated Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena office, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, between 1 January 2020 and 24 November 2025.
In total, 22 drone-related incidents were documented.
The Susquehanna nuclear power plant accounted for eight incidents in just over a month. In contrast, the Columbia Generating Station in Washington state accounted for nine across a period of nearly three months.
Taken together, those two sites made up 17 of the 22 incidents.
Several incidents around Susquehanna involved multiple drones approaching from multiple directions.
Above: Susquehanna Steam Electric Station
Some reports describe drones hovering around the perimeter and then periodically moving into the protected airspace before pulling back again.
Two incidents are especially notable.
On 26 September 2022, the log states that eight drones entered the airspace of the plant and that the interaction lasted approximately two hours and 45 minutes.
On 3 October 2022, another event involving multiple drones lasted two hours and eight minutes.
The 3 October 2022 incident report describes at least four drones entering the airspace from multiple directions, with three appearing to be quadcopters and a fourth described as larger, triangular in shape and apparently carrying a large spotlight.
According to the report, the drones had red, green, and white lights, with at least one appearing to have blue lights.
Another entry, dated 29 October 2022, records five quadcopter-type drones operating near the plant.
Around the Columbia Generating Station, most of the incidents involved single drones rather than swarms.
From November 2022 through early February 2023, the site saw repeated appearances by drones, including some described as large, and one case in which the Department of Energy’s Hanford Patrol followed a drone east toward the city of Richland before losing sight of it.
In another incident, the drone was estimated to be eight to ten feet in diameter with white and red flashing lights.
Nuclear power stations at Comanche Peak in Texas, Monticello in Minnesota and Peach Bottom in Pennsylvania appear more episodic in the released set of records.
Comanche Peak logged three single-drone incidents. Monticello logged one case in which a suspected operator was seen on the road west of the protected area and reportedly told plant personnel he intended to photograph a nearby river. Even in that case, the drone still crossed the protected area. By the time plant security was sent to speak to the operator, around 30 minutes later, the individual had disappeared.
Peach Bottom appears once, with a brief overflight.
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2022, specifically tasks the AARO to work with the NRC; it states the UAP Office must, in its annual reports, record incidents and descriptions of UAP or drones of unknown origin seen over NRC sites:
‘In consultation with the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the number of reported incidents, and descriptions thereof, of unidentified aerial phenomena or drones of unknown origin associated with nuclear power generating stations, nuclear fuel storage sites, or other sites or facilities regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.’
In 2023, an NRC spokesperson told Liberation Times, that the agency took potential threats from Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) ‘seriously’ and ‘continuously coordinates’ on such concerns with federal intelligence and law enforcement partners.
The NRC spokesperson stated that:
“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes potential threats from any aircraft, uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) or unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) seriously and requires nuclear power plant operators and certain other licensees to report any suspicious activity in the airspace over their facilities.
“The agency continuously coordinates on these and other potential concerns with federal intelligence and law enforcement partners and can take immediate and appropriate action to address any security threats to our licensed facilities.”
The area around Columbia Generating Station in Washington state has a history of reported anomalous activity dating back to the 1940s.
In a 2009 email to UAP researcher Robert Hastings, former serviceman Clarence R. “Bud” Clem recalled an apparent wartime encounter involving an unknown object over the top-secret Hanford Ordnance Works in Washington state.
Hanford, now decommissioned, was established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project and is located roughly four miles from Columbia Generating Station.
Clem, a former U.S. Naval Reserve officer and F6F Hellcat fighter pilot assigned to Air Group 50 aboard the USS Cowpens, said that in 1945, during World War Two and months before the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, radar operators detected a bogey over the highly classified Hanford site.
The sighting prompted a rapid response from personnel at nearby Naval Air Station Pasco.
According to Clem’s account, a Lieutenant Commander named Richard Brown scrambled in an armed aircraft and pursued what was described as a bright ball of fire, but was unable to catch it before it sped off to the northwest and vanished from radar.
As documented by Robert Hastings in his book UFOs and Nukes, unusual incidents continued at Hanford after the war.
A now-declassified Air Force intelligence report states that in May 1949, personnel working at the site saw a “silvery, disc-shaped” object hovering over Hanford.
Edward Ruppelt, the United States Air Force officer who directed Project Blue Book, the formal U.S. government study of UFOs conducted between 1952 and 1969, also documented a case near Hanford in December 1952.
In the incident, a pilot and radar observer of a patrolling F-94, flying at 26,000 feet, first spotted a light and then saw a large, round, white object with a dim reddish glow coming from two “windows”.
After losing visual contact, the pilot obtained a radar lock-on and was forced to alter course several times to avoid a collision. At the time of the incident, Hanford was the world’s largest producer of weapons-grade plutonium.
Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station witnessed a UAP event in 1970, when on the night of 15 October, a large number of residents in Delta, a borough in Pennsylvania, say they witnessed a flashing red and blue object circling the skies less than a mile from the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant.
Above: Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station
One of the witnesses was William Ramsay, a bus driver for the Southeastern School District, who claimed to have witnessed the event. He stated: "It had rotating lights," he said, "and it kept coming and going".
The newly obtained information comes following a spate of recent incursions by mysterious unidentified drones over the United States.
Last month, a series of unidentified drones were seen hovering over Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., where Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio live. The incident prompted the White House to consider relocating them.
In another alarming incident last month, a large number of unauthorized drones were seen flying over Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, home to long-range B-52 bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons, triggering a lockdown.
Speaking to Liberation Times, Marik Von Rennenkampff, a former analyst at the U.S. Department of State and Obama administration appointee at the Department of Defense (now Department of War), stated:
‘The brazen incursions by unknown ‘drones’ over sensitive nuclear infrastructure outlined in these reports is truly alarming - especially after ‘multiple waves’ of unknown objects flew with complete impunity for several days over Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. Barksdale, notably, hosts the headquarters of Air Force Global Strike Command, which oversees the U.S.’s nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles and air-launched nuclear weapons.
‘Similarly brazen - and mysterious - incursions persisted for nearly three weeks over Langley Air Force Base, home to Air Combat Command, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, headquarters of Air Force intelligence, the Air Force Research Laboratory, and Air Force Materiel Command.
‘In short, an unknown actor is systematically asserting dominance over the most critical and sensitive military sites in the United States. The failure of these shocking incidents to raise more alarm bells in the public discourse is baffling - and an inherent national security risk.’
