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New Threat To Seaside Nuclear Plants, Datacenters: Jellyfish

Nerval's Lobster writes "One of the largest nuclear-power plants in the world was forced to shut down temporarily Sept. 29, after pipes that bring Baltic Sea water in to cool the plant's turbines became clogged with tons of jellyfish. The sudden influx of common moon jellyfish overwhelmed the screens and filters that keep flotsam and most sea life out of the Oskarshamn nuclear plant in southeastern Sweden. The plant was forced to shut down its No. 3 reactor – the largest boiling-water reactor in the world, which generates 1,400 megawatts of electricity when it is jellyfish-free and running at full power. The reactor stayed down until early Oct. 1, after the jellyfish had been cleared out and engineers approved the cooling system as invertebrate-free. It's not easy to overwhelm the cooling system for a nuclear power plant, but Oskarshamn's is unusually resilient. There is a separate intake- and cooling system for each reactor, all of which were designed for the brackish, polluted water in that area of the Baltic Sea. Most datacenters are too far inland to worry about jellyfish in their cooling water, though green-IT-promoters Vertatique estimated that a 5,000-sq.-ft. datacenter would consume almost 9 million gallons of water for cooling. That means ocean-side datacenters that use sea water for cooling (such as Google's datacenter in Hamina, Finland — also on the Baltic Sea) are just as susceptible to jellyfish attacks as nuclear power plants."

6 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Rampant Jellyfish by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    If an "effort" is required to get Japanese people to eat something that comes out of the ocean, you really don't want to go near it.

  2. Re:Hope you like 'em! They'll dominate in a few ye by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just convince the Chinese that they are an aphrodesiac. They'll become an endangered species in no time.

  3. Re:What language is this? by Alsee · · Score: 3, Funny

    Muahahahaha.

    Those are MY jellyfish. With with frikin laser beams attached to their heads.
    Except the lasers fell off.... because have you ever tried attaching something to a jellyfish?

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  4. Re:And the worst part... by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Funny

    Keep your eyes on those geiger counters, kids. Tick tick tickety means run your ass outta there.

  5. Re:Good thing there's no nuclear plant in Seattle by slick7 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Remember, jellyfish are smarter than Congress. Not that that's hard to do.

    That jellyfish has my vote. Finally, someone with a brain larger than a politician's.

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    The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
  6. Re:Rampant Jellyfish by pspahn · · Score: 1, Funny

    As long as your kid's apathetic teacher isn't banging the chef, I suppose things will be okay.

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    Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.