The jellyfish dominate the nuclear power plant in demonstration of the mother’s strength

The jellyfish can be without spin, but they showed the backbone of an ecologist dedicated during the weekend. A swarm of gelatinous sea residents overwhelmed a nuclear power plant in the north of France, forcing its stop on Sunday.

The incident began when a “massive and unpredictable” swarm of jellyfish began to overwhelm the filter drums, which remove the debris from cooling water systems, at the Gravelines nuclear power plant on the North Sea coast. The volume of jellyfish captured in the filter forced four reactors to the factory to enter an automatic stop, removing them offline to avoid a potential disaster.

The timing could certainly have been better, because the Guardian reported that two other reactors at the factory were already offline at the time for summer interview. The whole factory, which is able to propel around five million houses on Sunday, was completely closed. According to the European Energy Outlet Montel News, the incident eliminated 10% of the nuclear capacity of France.

Although the loss of power is not ideal, it certainly beats other potential results. The good news is that the factory safety system has worked as expected. EDF, the company that exploits the plan, said the incident had no trouble for facilities, staff or the environment, and that there are no long -term security problems. The factory is expected to come back online once the drums are cleared and operations can continue without fear of slipping by royant jellyfish.

All this thing “overwhelmed by jellyfish” has become a little problem for nuclear power plants, because the number of incidents continues to accumulate. Similar occurrence tormented a plant in Sweden in 2013, Scotland, Israel, Japan and Florida in 2011 and California in 2008. It is difficult to do anything because jellyfish flowers can be difficult to predict. They tend to present themselves, and when this happens near a nuclear power plant, operators must face it, although there have been efforts to try to predict better when a swarm may appear.

One thing we know, however, is that jellyfish flowers become more common – partly due to human activity. The warming of ocean temperatures is more welcoming for jellyfish, which also find more food sources because overfishing and warmer conditions have pushed competitors out of their environment. It’s a bit surprising how something that represents 95% water can create such major problems, but we have only ourselves to blame.