Jellyfish invasion causes nuclear reactor to shut down

One of the largest nuclear plants was forced to shut down after its pipes became clogged with jellyfish.

09:06 03 October 2013

On Sunday, hundreds of moon jellyfish has entered and blocked the pipes where cool water passes through to reach the plant’s turbine. This forced the staff at the Oskarshamn nuclear plant in Sweden to shut down one of the world’s largest nuclear reactors. Based on reports, the pipes have been cleared and last night, engineers were preparing to restart the reactor.

The same incident happened in 2005 to the first unit at Oskarshamn. It also happened last year when staff at the California-based Diablo Canyon plant had to shut down its reactor two after jellyfish-like organisms clogged the pipes.

Lene Moller, a researcher at the Swedish Institute for the Marine Environment, told Sky News: "There seems to be more and more of these extreme cases of blooming jellyfish.”

"But it's very difficult to say if there are more jellyfish, because there is no historical data."

"The moon jelly likes these types of waters.

"They don't care if there are algae blooms, they don't care if the oxygen concentration is low.

"The fish leave ... and (the moon jelly) can really take over the ecosystem."