Jellyfish wave shuts down Swedish nuke reactor

[NickB79]

http://news.yahoo.com/jellyfish-wave-shuts-down-swedish-nuke-reactor-133747050--finance.html

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

By Tuesday, the pipes had been cleaned of the jellyfish 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 Anders Osterberg, 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.

Jellyfish are not a new problem for nuclear power plants. Last year the California-based Diablo Canyon facility had to shut its reactor two after gobs of sea salp — a gelatinous, jellyfish-like organism — clogged intake pipes. In 2005, the first unit at Oskarshamn was temporarily turned off due to a sudden jellyfish influx.

I've heard about jellyfish waves clogging pipes at reactors before, but in SWEDEN?? And in September??

[gopiscrap]

1. Yikes

[GliderGuider]

2. Umm ... Sweden? September?

This ocean change thingy seems to be happening....


Oh, what's that phrase I remember hearing once or twice....


Wait, it'll come to me........


Oh yeah.......


"Faster Than Expected"™

[FBaggins]

4. An interesting flip-side

It was only a month and a half ago that they were speculating re: whether climate change was causing this species of jellyfish to disappear.

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130813/climate-change-causing-sweden-s-most-common-jellyfish-disappear

[NickB79]

5. Next week's headline

"Nuclear power plant drives endangered Swedish jellyfish to extinction."

[Auggie]

3. There's a lot of sneaky ways climate change will get us ...

this might be one.