Jellyfish shut down nuclear plant (Sweden)

[theHandpuppet]

Source: The Belfast Telegraph

02 October 2013

A huge cluster of jellyfish has forced one of the world's largest nuclear reactors to shut down - a phenomenon that marine biologists say could become more common.

Operators of the Oskarshamn nuclear plant in Sweden had to close reactor number three after tons of jellyfish clogged the pipes that bring in cool water to the plant's turbines.

By Tuesday, the pipes had been cleaned and engineers were preparing to restart the reactor, which at 1,400 megawatts of output is the largest boiling-water reactor in the world, said a spokesman for OKG, the plant operator.

All three Oskharshamn reactors are boiling-water types, the same technology at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant that suffered a catastrophic failure in 2011 after a tsunami breached the facility's walls and flooded its equipment....


Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/jellyfish-shut-down-nuclear-plant-29625387.html

[kelliekat44]

1. Now we are going to face super nuker jellyfish? nt

[Pachamama]

2. What is shocking to me about this story is not the Jellyfish, but rather that how many billions are

...spent funding these reactors, with the knowledge of dangers due to the nuclear activity and the specific design of the cooling system needing water, yet the body of water they build near and depend on for that cooling, doesnt have a proper filtering system, say for Jellyfish? Didnt someone think about this in advance and say "the ocean has lots of sea life and microscopic organisms that need to be filtered out and could risk the shut down of the system"?

The fact that jellyfish could shutdown nuclear reactors, especially when scientists know that the amount of Jellyfish in our oceans are increasing in numbers....

Just further evidence to me how dangerous these reactors are, how vulnerable and how they need to be decommissioned.

[LittleGirl]

8. Your argument! Great points.

it seems so logical!

[Pachamama]

14. Sadly....logic doesnt seem to factor in to the decisionmaking these days....

Sigh....

[Uncle Joe]

17. Two primary dynamics are likely to increase Jellyfish populations as well

that being overfishing and global warming.

http://ens-newswire.com/2013/05/30/un-warns-of-global-shift-from-a-fish-to-a-jellyfish-ocean/

In addition to overfishing, Boero notes the impact of global warming which enables the species that thrive at tropical latitudes to increase their range, and the prevalent use of sea walls, built to prevent coastal erosion, which are ideal habitats for some jellyfish species.

“Overall, overfishing and global warming are probably the most important drivers of increased jellyfish presence in the global ocean and, with due exceptions, also in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea,” writes Boero.

(snip)

“In the last decade, however, the media are reporting on an increasingly high number of gelatinous plankton blooms,” he writes in the report. “The reasons for these reports is that thousands of tourists are stung, fisheries are harmed or even impaired by jellyfish that eat fish eggs and larvae, coastal plants are stopped by gelatinous masses.”

Power plants and other industries on coastlines can suck masses of jellyfish into their intake water pumps. The presence of jellyfish forces the plants to stop functioning to clear their pipes, a problem that has affected facilities in Japan, Philippines, China, India, Baltic Sea, Gulf of Oman, Qatar, the Arabian [or Persian] Gulf, and the United States.

[Hubert Flottz]

3. Well...

Maybe there's a chance for Harry Reid yet?

[tanyev]

4. Revenge, at last.

[revolutionbrees]

7. I was thinking that Mother Nature had had enough

Now she is taking things into her own hands.

[Pachamama]

15. Swedish Fish.....

LOL

[Peace Patriot]

5. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

I know this isn't funny at all. I know we're all gonna die, and everything's gonna die, from nukes. It is our bete noire, our Achilles heel, our own petard, our Faustian Bargain, our Fukushima Waterloo (fuck you, She-Ma--Mother Nature----down the toilet drain we go), HUMAN FATE (all that evolutionary effort, and Hubble and all, come to nought), and we ain't gonna "Meet Again" on "Some Sunny Day," or at least that's what I fear on bad days, and the horrors of how nukes will end us are beyond nigthmarish visions of Hell...NOT FUNNY...

...but, but...

JELLY FISH!

[Zorra]

6. I love swimming and playing in the ocean, and therefore detest jellyfish.

Two and a half years ago, on the Mexican Riviera I unknowingly swam and body surfed all day in a bloom, and got a severe case of full body Sea Bather's Itch. It was so bad I had to be on steroids for two weeks.

I don't like killing things, but if there was ever a good paying Professional Jellyfish Exterminator job open, I would sign up and be relentless in attempting to wipe jellyfish off the face of the earth.

[theHandpuppet]

12. Sounds like a job for Spongebob!

Seriously, though, those nasty critters are having a real population boom and its causing all kinds of problems around the globe.

[athena]

9. Not long from now, jellyfish may be all there is in our oceans.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/sep/26/jellyfish-theyre-taking-over/?pagination=false

Think about that the next time you eat fish.
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/oceans/overfishing/

[Pachamama]

16. Sir james Lovelock, who came up with the "Gaia Theory"talked in length about this in his book...

..."Revenge of Gaia" and the resulting increase in numbers of Jellyfish in the oceans due to climate change and decreasing numbers of other sea life. That was when I came to the sad realization that our children and grandchildren will be relying on a cuisine of jellyfish in not so distant future....

Assuming they arent so ueber-toxic and radiated....

[tomm2thumbs]

10. Jellyfish shut down the US Government as well

We just can't seem to clear the pipes of these ones.

[Voice for Peace]

11. Jellyfish to the rescue!!

:yay:

[lastlib]

13. A lot of parallels to Washington--slimy blobs with stingers.....

...shutting off the lights...............making a lot of hard-working honest workers clean up the aftermath, and people down-line suffering the consequences, no pain for the blobs that caused it........