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+--- Thread: (UK) Jellyfish attack nuclear power plant. Again. (/thread-11208.html)
(UK) Jellyfish attack nuclear power plant. Again. - C C - Oct 29, 2021
https://thebulletin.org/2021/10/jellyfish-attack-nuclear-power-plant-again/
INTRO: Scotland’s only working nuclear power plant at Torness shut down in an emergency procedure this week when jellyfish clogged the sea water-cooling intake pipes at the plant, according to the Scotland Herald. Without access to cool water, a nuclear power plant risks overheating, with potentially disastrous results. The intake pipes can also be damaged, which disrupts power generation. And ocean life that gets sucked into a power plant’s intake pipes risks death.
The threat these gelatinous, pulsating, umbrella-shaped marine animals pose to nuclear power plants is neither new nor unknown. (Indeed, the Bulletin reported on this threat in 2015.) Nuclear power plant closures—even temporary ones—are expensive.
To protect marine life and avert power plant closures, scientists are exploring early warning system options. For example, researchers at Cranfield University in the United Kingdom launched a project earlier this year to determine whether drones may be used to provide estimates of jellyfish locations, amounts, and density.
“The successful operation of [beyond visual line of sight drones] will enable us to detect threats from marine ingress at an earlier state and prevent disruption to the power plant,” Monica Rivas Casado, a senior lecturer in environmental monitoring at Cranfield, said. In the United Kingdom, 20 percent of electricity is nuclear, a percentage roughly equaled in the United States, compared with approximately 10 percent globally.
Blooms of translucent jellyfish with their trailing, stinging tentacles are sometimes described as “invasions” because they often emerge en masse in way that appears sudden... (MORE)
RE: (UK) Jellyfish attack nuclear power plant. Again. - Zinjanthropos - Oct 29, 2021
There's always peanut butter and a scientist
https://www.deepseanews.com/2014/01/creation-of-the-worlds-first-peanut-butter-and-jellyfish/
Nuclear plant workers: Bring a loaf of bread and a butterknife with you to work.
Is there something about nuclear plants that attract the jellies?
RE: (UK) Jellyfish attack nuclear power plant. Again. - C C - Oct 30, 2021
(Oct 29, 2021 05:36 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Is there something about nuclear plants that attract the jellies?
It's not so much that they're attracted to the intakes as just becoming heavily populated in the waters near power plants, as years go by. Vastly increasing the chances of their getting sucked in. Sometimes there are 50 to 100 jellyfish per cubic meter of water, so thick they can be seen from aircraft overhead.
Some jellyfish are trash species that thrive in degraded ocean waters that have been afflicted by warming temperatures, overfishing, acidification, fertilizer run-off, contaminants, etc. Other enriching yet more environmentally vulnerable organisms disappear from the local food web. And then rabble like jellyfish swarms and algal blooms explosively inherit the simple ecosystem and competitive void that arises from the collapse of the formerly complex one.
Quote:There's always peanut butter and a scientist
https://www.deepseanews.com/2014/01/creation-of-the-worlds-first-peanut-butter-and-jellyfish/
Nuclear plant workers: Bring a loaf of bread and a butterknife with you to work.
"The authors expected many things to happen. But the moon jellies eating peanut butter was not one of them. To everyone’s complete shock, however, that’s precisely what happened. 'Mean size had increased to 4.17±1.06mm (n=19) after 8 days of peanutbutterification' the authors write. In other words, the peanut butter jellies were actually growing. And better yet, they became little peanut butter jelly cups: 'Throughout this period it was noted that jellies that had recently fed displayed a distinct brownish hue owing to their high degree of peanutbutterocity.'"
Bet they even beat the aflatoxin of butter made from mold infected peanuts.