Jellyfish Swarm Forces French Nuclear Plant To Shut (bbc.com) 39
AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: A French nuclear plant temporarily shut down on Monday due to a "massive and unpredictable presence of jellyfish" in its filters, its operator said. The swarm clogged up the cooling system and caused four units at the Gravelines nuclear power plant to automatically switch off, energy group EDF said. The plant is cooled from a canal connected to the North Sea -- where several species of jellyfish are native and can be seen around the coast when the waters are warm. According to nuclear engineer Ronan Tanguy, the marine animals managed to slip through systems designed to keep them out because of their "gelatinous" bodies.
"They were able to evade the first set of filters then get caught in the secondary drum system," he told the BBC. Mr Tanguy, who works at the WNA, said this will have created a blockage which reduced the amount of water being drawn in, prompting the units to shut down automatically as a precaution. He stressed that the incident was a "non-nuclear event" and more a "nuisance" for the on-site team to clean up. For local people, there would be no impact on their safety or how much energy they could access: "They wouldn't perceive it as any different to any other shut-down of the system for maintenance."
"They were able to evade the first set of filters then get caught in the secondary drum system," he told the BBC. Mr Tanguy, who works at the WNA, said this will have created a blockage which reduced the amount of water being drawn in, prompting the units to shut down automatically as a precaution. He stressed that the incident was a "non-nuclear event" and more a "nuisance" for the on-site team to clean up. For local people, there would be no impact on their safety or how much energy they could access: "They wouldn't perceive it as any different to any other shut-down of the system for maintenance."
Beats dolphins with lasers. (Score:3)
So who are we blaming today?
Re:Beats dolphins with lasers. (Score:5, Informative)
Well, this time it's global warming. As the oceans get warmer the jellyfish are going to increasingly become a problem. High acidity and toxic algae blooms will follow.
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Modded down for telling the truth... who's got skin in the game of "big jellyfish" though? Obviously they can't be trusted.
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Don't take it personally. Slashdot moderators are people. Statistically some of them are idiots.
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SNNP stays on and pumps out 3 eyed fish! (Score:2)
SNNP stays on and pumps out 3 eyed fish!
Free jellyfish! (Score:2, Interesting)
This isn't the first time jellyfish have clogged up a pipe of warm water coming from a nuclear plant, so my question is why not install something so that they can be harvested. Jellyfish are in no way endangered (their numbers are skyrocketing thanks to climate change) so why not simply treat them like a potential resource?
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The 7 year old in me thought "just put a giant blender in front of it" but for real, is there a good use for tons of mined jellyshish?
Re: Free jellyfish! (Score:2)
Re: Free jellyfish! (Score:3, Informative)
I thought they had blocked the pipe of *cool* water *going to* the power plant.
Re:Free jellyfish! (Score:4, Insightful)
The nuclear plant operator is not going to spend their own resources making a side business, so you'll have to come up with a company and make them an offer. Then the economical question. The relatively low amounts that clog the pipe (few tonnes would already a big number), the low frequency of the occurrence, the low amount of fertilizer in a jellyfish (~98% of the jellyfish is water or so), and the relatively low value (by the tonne) of fertilizers (500 EUR/t), make it challenging to build a profitable business.
Though I could find a student project of selling a fertilizer out of jellyfish collected on beach during summer vacation. But they sell small amounts of a premium product, not tonnes.
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So (Score:5, Funny)
Jellyfish leave nuke plant in a jam?
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Let's see the planners squirm their way out of this one.
It's a new low (Score:2)
We've long been accustomed to France surrendering to Germans, spear throwing tribesmen, and the occasional Boy Scout troupe.
But, really, come on now. Surrendering to jellyfish is a new low . . .
hawk
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Jellyfish were here first, humans are the actual invasive species.
Re:France needs cooling towers. (Score:5, Informative)
Just for info, France has about 50% of open-cooled plants, the rest being closed-cooled (the big towers). As always, reliability relies on having different cooling designs and locations, so that if one type is stressed, like rivers warming during a heatwave, the other can keep running without major output loss.
Even when heat-related restrictions occur, it’s largely because France is unusually strict about protecting aquatic life, taking extra care not to discharge overly warm water. When necessary to ensure power supply, especially to neighboring countries, those limits can (and have in the past) been temporarily lifted. Opponents of nuclear often cite such incidents in bad faith, ignoring the fact that these measures are taken out of environmental caution, not because nuclear power inherently fails in hot weather.
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if only the installed cooling towers like so many other nuclear power plants in the world.
France is not an outlier in cooling designs. The choice of cooling towers is entirely dependent on location. Just under half of the nuclear plants in the world employ open loop cooling, just under half of France's designs do too. Closed loop cooling is incredibly water intensive losing a lot to evaporation.
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You use cooling towers and ponds when you don't have an existing body of water next door to the NPP. The cost of dealing with the occasional clog is significantly less than building and maintaining a closed-loop cooling system.
I'm wondering how they keep the seawater from corroding the pipes. I understand freshwater nuclear plants without cooling towers. I'm terrified to think about saltwater for the outer loop. I mean, if it leaks, it's just hot water, so it isn't like it would be a nuclear disaster, but man, what a pain the backside it would be to go down for a year while you cut out and replace all of those pipes.
What caught my attention in this story, though, was that four reactors shut down, which means that two of them k
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which means that two of them kept running
No, they were already shutdown for maintenance. The entire plant was shut down.
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which means that two of them kept running
No, they were already shutdown for maintenance. The entire plant was shut down.
Ah. That makes even more sense. Guess you can tell I didn't RTFA. :-)
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If someone else hadn't answered better, I'd have suggested that maybe there was still enough water flow to keep two reactors running. Guess who else didn't RTFA!
Nice! (Score:2, Insightful)
So the nuke-fans have another problem, besides frozen rivers, low rivers and hot rivers.
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As usual, the nuclear fanatics will generate a bunch of lies, like this is not a "big" problem (4 reactors doing an automated shutdown at the same time is a massive, massive problem and a serious threat to grid stability) and other crap. These people are dumb and deep in delusion.
Imagine my surprise (Score:2)
Have seen harbors on the east coast jammed with jellyfish. Wondered how long it would take before it was noticed that industrial cooling would be affected. Guess someone needs to design a better tea strainer. Also, with wildfires threaatening power lines, curious about the viability of one grid to rule them all. Somehow, loosely integrated local power plants doesn't seem like that bad of an idea -- especially if one can manufacture them as opposed to crafting...
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