LILLE (France), Aug 12 \u2014 A nuclear plant in northern France was temporarily shut down yesterday after a swarm of jellyfish clogged pumps used to cool the reactors, energy group EDF said.<\/p>\n
The automatic shutdowns of four units \u201chad no impact on the safety of the facilities, the safety of personnel, or the environment\u201d, EDF said on its website.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese shutdowns are the result of the massive and unpredictable presence of jellyfish in the filter drums of the pumping stations,\u201d the Gravelines plant operator said.<\/p>\n
The site was fully shut after the incident, with its two other units already offline for maintenance.<\/p>\n
Teams were carrying out inspections to restart the production units \u201cin complete safety\u201d, EDF said, adding the units were expected to restart on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no risk of a power shortage,\u201d the company added, saying other energy sources, including solar power, were operational.<\/p>\n
Gravelines is Western Europe\u2019s largest nuclear power plant with six reactors, each with the capacity to produce 900 megawatts.<\/p>\n
The site is due to open two next-generation reactors, each with a capacity of 1,600 megawatts, by 2040.<\/p>\n
This is not the first time jellyfish have shut down a nuclear facility, though EDF said such incidents were \u201cquite rare\u201d, adding the last impact on its operations was in the 1990s.<\/p>\n
There have been cases of plants in other countries shutting down due to jellyfish invasions, notably a three-day closure in Sweden in 2013 and a 1999 incident in Japan that caused a major drop in output.<\/p>\n
Experts say overfishing, plastic pollution and climate change have created conditions allowing jellyfish to thrive and reproduce. \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LILLE (France), Aug 12 \u2014 A nuclear plant in northern France was temporarily shut down yesterday after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,52551,52548,52546,52547,52549,128,52550,338],"class_list":["post-66205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-climate-change-jellyfish-population","tag-edf-energy-shutdown","tag-gravelines-nuclear-plant","tag-jellyfish-clog-france","tag-nuclear-safety-protocols","tag-science","tag-western-europe-power-generation","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}