Unknown flying objects over Swedish nuclear plants

On January 14, 2022, three nuclear facilities in Sweden had simultaneous incursions of unknown flying objects. Swedish mainstream media reports obscure if it was drones or something else.

Five days after my article about the need for the European Union to address the UFO and nuclear-weapons connection, incursions of unknown flying objects over three civilian nuclear facilities in Sweden (see map below) were major news in Swedish mainstream media (obviously, there is no connection between the incursions in question and my previous article).

In what follows, I will first summarise the story as reported by some Swedish news outlets, and then make some comments about the reported story. Here you can find coverage of the story by The Drive/The Warzone.

The story: drones or something else?

The details of the incursions are still scarce, unclear, and sometimes contradictory in the Swedish news. But the general story seems to be as follows:

Swedish public service television (SVT) reported on January 15 that a guard at the Forsmark nuclear plant on Friday 14, 2022, at 8:20 P.M. local time, alarmed about a “larger drone” that could “withstand strong winds”. The guard saw the larger drone “fly in over” the Forsmark nuclear plant. When a police patrol arrived to the nuclear plant, they first sighted the larger drone at 8:51 P.M. The police searched the larger drone with a helicopter, but “lost contact with the drone” at 10:10 P.M. According to SVT, the police had “not found any indications of the drone landing inside the protected area of the nuclear plant or that it dropped any objects from the air” (the article by SVT was latest updated at 2:54 P.M., January 15).

Forsmark nuclear plant (right, at the top) is a final repository for radioactive waste. Oskarshamn's nuclear plant had a drone incursion at the same time as Forsmark. The Ringhals nuclear plant (left, at the top) also seems to have had a drone incursion at the same time (Friday 14, around 7:00–8:00 P.M.), but the reports are more uncertain than in the two other cases. The distance between Oskarshamn and Forsmark is approximately 475 kilometres (km), and between Ringhals and Oskarshamn approximately 300 km.

The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, reports that personnel at Oskarshamn’s nuclear plant, at 7:00 P.M. alarmed about “something that seemed to be a drone flying over the nuclear plant-area”. Aftonbladet also reports that after 9:00 P.M. on Friday 14, guards at Ringhals nuclear plant alarmed the police “after hearing something that sounded like a drone flying over the area”.

But after searching for the flying object with a helicopter with no results, the police state that “it is not possible to confirm whether the object was a drone”. Also, the police made a search of the nuclear plant in the south, Barsebäck (left, at the bottom on the map above), after an "eventual sighting of a drone had been made by the personnel” at the nuclear plant.

My comments on the story

Even for a Swedish reader, it is hard to get a clear sense of what has happened, when, where, and so on. However, it is crystal clear that more than one incursion of an unknown flying object has occurred at more than one nuclear plant at approximately the same time. 

The incursion at the Forsmark nuclear plant seems to have been the most severe, and the “larger drone” was sighted by people at the nuclear plant (at least one guard) and by several police officers. 

Whether the helicopter pilot observed the larger done before the police lost contact with it is unclear in the reporting. Neither is there any information on whether military or civilian radar picked up any signals (unlikely if the drone/object never operated on higher altitudes).

The larger drone operating over Forsmark could withstand strong winds. So, how strong were the winds at Forsmark on Friday 14, around 8:00 P.M.? 

I have found no weather data for Forsmark on that day and time-frame. The closest weather station, run by Sweden's Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), I found was on an island (Örskär) off the coast of where the Forsmark nuclear plant is located. That weather station recorded winds from 16, 0 meter per second (m/s) to 16, 7 m/s between 6:00 and 9:00 P.M. Between 10:00 P.M. and midnight the weather station recorded winds from 11, 3 m/s to 14, 3 m/s. Since the weather station is more exposed to the winds from the Bothnian Sea than the Forsmark nuclear plant, it is likely that the wind strength was less in the area that the larger drone operated. 

A reasonable estimate of the wind strength at Forsmark nuclear plant on Friday 14, and at the time frame of 8:00 to 10:00 P.M., is between 10, 8 and 13, 8 m/s (that corresponds to 39–49 kilometre per hour (km/h) according to SMHI).

Aerial photo of the Forsmark nuclear plant. Credit: visitforsmark.se.

If 10, 8 to 13, 8 m/s is a reasonable estimate of the wind strength, then whatever the object was, it had to have been quite robust. For people who are not familiar with the Swedish climate, I can say that at this time of the year the sun sets around 5:30 P.M. at the location of the Forsmark nuclear plant. So, it was dark outside when the guard at Forsmark sighted (at 8:00 P.M.) the larger drone and when the police searched for it with a helicopter (the search lasted for approx. one hour and ended at 10:10 P.M.). 

Besides the darkness, and perhaps the wind, the visibility seems to have been good in the evening at Forsmark on January 14. No news reports have mentioned what people noticed (shapes, lights, sounds, how they flew, etc.) at the different places where these events happened.

Thus, the data is inadequate (scant and unclear). You cannot draw any certain conclusions about what the unknown flying objects are or are not. Not even in the “strongest” case of the Forsmark nuclear plant.

But there are two strange circumstances in this Swedish “drones at nuclear plants” story. The first is, of course, that several nuclear facilities had incursions on the same day and approximately at the same time. The police have confirmed incursions at the Forsmark and Oskarshamn nuclear plants. The Ringhals nuclear plant seems to have had some kind of drone incident, but here the reports are even more scant.

There is, however, another circumstance that I have not mentioned above. During this second week of January, the Swedish Armed Forces mobilised on the island, Gotland (see map below), because of increased Russian military activity in the area (in the air, sea, and on the mainland, like Kaliningrad). Put this situation in a broader geopolitical context of deteriorating relations between NATO and Russia (due to, for instance, Russia’s presence in Ukraine).

The pin shows the island, Gotland. Oskarshamn nuclear plant is approximately 120 km southwest of Gotland. The Forsmark nuclear plant is between Stockholm and Gävle.

The above mentioned makes me think that the “UFOs” over Swedish nuclear plants may very well be a coordinated military operation by Russia. Or is the explanation that some Swedish drone-enthusiasts came up with a bold (or foolish) plan (prank) that they could not resist executing? 

Or is the Swedish military testing its drones and/or the security at the nuclear plants in question? At the moment, “the larger drone” and the other sighted “drones”, are technically Unidentified Flying Objects or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) (according to me; neither the Swedish police nor the military have used the terms UFO or UAP).

But I believe the most probable explanation of the “UFO” incursions over Swedish nuclear plants is terrestrial. That is, human activity is likely the best explanation of the incursions on January 14, 2022. 

Nonetheless, it is a remarkable story, and I am not aware of anything similar being reported in the Swedish mainstream media (Forsmark has had several drone incidents before, but I am not aware of reports of incidents/incursions on several nuclear plants simultaneously).

What remains to be seen is whether the Swedish public will know the complete story of what flew over and around several Swedish nuclear plants on January 14, 2022. A safe bet is that we will not. I can only hope that some Swedish investigative journalist will prove us wrong.

Take care!