RTL Idag – Intelligence service: Sweden investigates drone flights over nuclear power plants
Sweden’s intelligence service is initiating an investigation of several drone flights that took place over nuclear power plants in the country during the weekend, the authority stated on Monday.
The security police said in a statement that they had taken over the sounding from the police regarding “the incidents where drones have been observed at Forsmark, Ringhals and Oskarshamn nuclear power plants”.
Forsmark is located about 140 kilometers north of Stockholm, while the other two are in southern Sweden.
Swedish police said on Saturday that it had received reports of drones flying over several nuclear power plants and added that it had no suspects at the time.
The nature of the flights led Sapo to decide that they needed to be investigated further and on suspicion of “gross unauthorized handling of confidential information”.
It did not disclose details of potential suspects.
A drone was also seen circling Sweden’s parliament and government buildings and the royal palace in central Stockholm, according to the newspaper Aftonbladet.
Referring to an unnamed source close to the matter, the newspaper said that the drone orbiting Stockholm was not a small commercial drone, but rather a winged military drone.
“This is not a small propeller drone, but a large winged drone with a wingspan of at least two meters,” said the source.
In 2018, Greenpeace activists flew a drone equipped as a flying Superman into a nuclear power plant in southeastern France, in order to show how the country’s reactors are vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
In 2014 and 2015, drone flights over several French nuclear power plants were reported, but Greenpeace denied any involvement in these incidents.