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Millions of Jellyfish Invade Nuclear Reactors

oxide7 writes "A nuclear reactor in Japan was forced to shut down due to infiltration of enormous swarms of jellyfish near the power plant. A similar incident was also reported recently in Israel, when millions of jellyfish clogged the sea-water cooling system of a power plant."

2 of 280 comments (clear)

  1. US Navy vs Jellyfish by ikedasquid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Jellyfish clogging marine heat exchangers is a common problem at sea, but is of particular concern for US Naval vessels using nuclear propulsion. Typically the only fix is to open the exchanger and manually clean the stuff out. Some ships have a capability to flush with either low pressure steam or reverse flush with firemain water (although the firemain is now also likely to contain jellyfish). How these multi-billion dollar machines are designed without a method for removing dead jellyfish is beyond my comprehension.

  2. Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers by Runaway1956 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Historically, we didn't have a population problem. China reflects the population growth of the entire world. Until about 1850, population growth was a stable thing, growing fractionally every century or so. After about 1850, we saw this exponential growth.

    The reason I picked China as the example, is that China has made a conscious effort to control population. One couple, one child. Negative population growth, which should put China comfortably within the land's capability to support their population within the next 100 years or so. (Sorry, no, I haven't researched projected population figures - I'm just guesstimating that 100 years from now, China's population will be (very roughly) about 1/4 what it is today.)

    Roughly half of the rest of the world still practices unrestrained population growth - all of Islam, all of the Catholic people, and much of the third world no matter their religion, politics, or anything else.

    I think it's past time that some of those people were brought up to date on the results of unrestricted procreation.

    --
    "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br