The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a thicker paper trail on aircraft over U.S. nuclear sites than the six-month slice that reached AARO.
Liberation Times obtained 67 drone-related NRC reports through FOIA. They cover 28 named sites in 17 states. Register dates run from 1 February 2024 to 25 March 2026. Every entry is marked “Closed Unresolved.” Many narratives also say the report is still open pending internal review. The documents do not explain that mismatch, and neither label says what the FBI, the FAA, or local police later found.
This is a different stack from the 22 incidents Liberation Times published in April, which covered September 2022 through February 2023. Former NRC analyst Daryl Johnson has said identification almost never happens. These pages are the reports themselves.
Surry, Twenty Miles from Langley
Five of the reports are Surry Nuclear Power Plant in Virginia, about 20 miles from Langley Air Force Base.
On 3 December 2024, Surry reported multiple drones over owner-controlled grounds and the protected area between 8:45 p.m. and midnight. The plant raised security and notified the FBI, local police, and Fort Eustis.
An account of sightings on 10 December describes a larger aircraft with red, green, and white lights, then “a triangular solid appearing shaped drone,” then two smaller aircraft “flying in a zig zag pattern” around the larger one. All three went east by northeast and left view.
On 12 December, an off-duty officer reported a drone near a checkpoint. The NRC report says the Fort Eustis control tower “confirmed that the drone appeared on radar at approximately 300 feet.”
On 17 December, another aircraft crossed the protected area and passed over both reactor containment buildings. Fort Eustis air traffic control told Surry there was no military drone activity in the area. The reports include no radar file and no image that identifies the aircraft.
Separate Pentagon PHALANX logs, obtained through FOIA and published by Government Attic, recorded 113 detection events around Langley that same December, from 56 drone serial numbers within about five miles. The December report says there were “no detects occurring within Langley’s base boundary.” Two aircraft on 2 December were about 250 metres west of the fence: a Skydio and a DJI that looked recreational. The Surry flights and the Langley logs share a month and a region. They do not match one aircraft from one site to the other.
Surry had already come up in the 2023 Langley investigation. In May 2024, NRC spokesperson David McIntyre told Liberation Times the plant had not filed a report for those December 2023 dates, because drone reporting was voluntary until January 2024. The rule now requires licensees to report flyovers above or near the facility. The December 2024 Surry pages are from after that change.
Car-Sized Aircraft at Hope Creek
On 13 December 2024, security at Hope Creek in New Jersey watched two drones leave the protected area. The report: “Both drones were 400 feet in the air with red and white flashing lights and were approximately the size of a small motor vehicle.” The next evening, three drones were inside the protected area. A larger craft hovered near the cooling tower, then entered near two smaller drones above Unit 1. Local police responded. The account says “The FBI opened an active investigation into the drone sightings.” It does not include what that investigation found. Sizes in these files are what the officers estimated.
Over the Reactor, Then the Lights Go Out
At Millstone in Connecticut, security reported seven drones on 14 December 2024, described as quadcopters about three feet by three feet. Two briefly entered the protected area. About 1:30 a.m., another aircraft near the spent-fuel storage facility was “a large (5 ft. across), V-shaped drone.” It flew west over the Unit 2 reactor building and left over Niantic Bay. Millstone did not change its security posture.
River Bend in Louisiana accounts for ten of the 67 reports, the most of any named site. On 6 January 2025, security saw about five drones roughly 100 feet above the reactor building: “The drones appeared as rectangular and black. No lights were observed.” They were gone to the south four minutes later. The plant notified the sheriff, the FAA, and the FBI.
At Diablo Canyon on 25 October 2024, an aircraft approached from over the ocean. Security called a Code Yellow. It spent about five minutes inside the protected area: two to three feet, small wings, amber lights, “extremely quiet with no buzzing sound present.” Cameras showed no operators. The identification attempts are redacted.
At Haddam Neck, a spent-fuel site in Connecticut, a 27 March 2025 report describes four drones circling the perimeter for hours. The next evening, an aircraft about the size of a folding table reversed direction. Officers wrote: “When the site turned their lights off, the drone did the same.”
Nuclear Fuel Services in Tennessee manufactures fuel material for Navy reactors. On 23 May 2025, security reported four drones between 11:10 p.m. and 11:43 p.m. “All sighted drones displayed navigation lights and one appeared to be a 10x10 ft rotary craft.” Footage review found a similar aircraft on 18 May, west to east at 300 feet or below, without loitering.
The newest pages are 2026. On 9 February, a contractor reported a drone over the north end of Three Mile Island. Site security and state police did not see it. At Byron in Illinois, a drone crossed the protected area at about 11:10 p.m. on 24 March 2026. The FBI’s Rockford office, FAA air traffic control, and the Ogle County Sheriff were called. By 12:08 a.m., officers and police saw two more. “Drone activity continued until 0130.” No operator is named.
What “Closed” Does Not Mean
Not every sighting was treated as hostile. Quad Cities security called 1–2 February 2024 sightings not suspicious. A 25 June 2024 flyover at Rancho Seco got the same call from the flight path. At Maine Yankee on 10 August 2024, officers watched a person launch a drone outside the entrance, ignore orders to leave, recover the aircraft, and drive off. Police did not intercept them.
The NRC Inspector General’s April–September 2025 semiannual report counted 34 suspicious-activity reports of unauthorized drones between 10 August 2024 and 11 January 2025, a shorter window than this FOIA. It said most specifics were sensitive. A March 2023 rule set 8 January 2024 as the compliance date for the new reporting requirements. The NRC’s January 2025 fact sheet says operators must report drone sightings, and that plant security has no authority to intercept or shoot the aircraft down.
The files show repeated flights over protected areas, reactor buildings, and a naval-fuel plant, plus calls to the FBI and the FAA. They show much less about what those calls produced. For the aircraft over the containment buildings, the questions in the reports are still the questions: who was flying them, and what investigators established after the plant called.
