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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."
I guess we'll need a Geiger counter to figure out if they have a natural bioluminescent jellyfish glow, or if they are irradiated.
There's been a huge increase in the jellyfish populations around the world, they've been thriving as the seas warm up - more plankton equals more jellyfish. Fishing boats are catching huge nets of the things when they're supposed to be picking up fish. It's such a problem, there's a Japanese effort to get people to eat jellyfish sushi.
Jellyfish attack?
attack [uh-tak] ...
verb (used with object)
1.
to set upon in a forceful, violent, hostile, or aggressive way, with or without a weapon; begin fighting with: He attacked him with his bare hands.
2.
to begin hostilities against; start an offensive against: to attack the enemy.
Kind of implies a certain amount of forethought and/or planning. If jellyfish attacked the cooling system then I have a newfound respect for the intelligence of jellyfish.
Perhaps they simply infested the cooling system? Editors, they aren't just for breakfast any more.
Does it not make more sense to use clean, filtered water to transfer the heat out into the ocean? The heat exchanger can sit in the ocean to facilitate removing heat without the worry of having jellyfish clogging filters. Effective cooling capacity might be reduced without an active water stream going over the heat exchanger, but this can be compensated for by using a larger one.
The only possible problem I can see is the build-up of aquatic life on the head exchanger. They would require periodic cleaning. But unlike filters, you would not have to shut down the cooling system to do so. In addition, you don't have to worry about there being any sudden changes in the cooling capacity of the system so it should be much easier to plan and perform the cleaning.
Ah, jellyfish. This is one of my favourite up-and-coming ocean doomsday scenarios.
Consider:
- No hard parts, so unaffected by ocean acidification
- Perform well in anoxic (low oxygen) environments
- Eat everything
- Have almost no nutritional value of their own
- Can shrink when food resources are low, and simply eat less
- Few natural predators
- Some species are effectively immortal by way of reverting to earlier life stages
To a certain extent, it's a bit of a miracle that the oceans managed to ever keep them in check, but oxygenation of the oceans created whole ecosystems of creatures that could--as a group--effectively compete against jellyfish.
There's no one predator that we can release that will keep the jellyfish contained or under control. It takes whole ecosystems to combat a real jellyfish problem.
Here's a review of a book written by Dr. Lisa Gershwin (composer Gershwin's granddaughter, I believe) http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/sep/26/jellyfish-theyre-taking-over/?pagination=false
Fortunately, humans are adept at obliterating species if they can get a taste for them. Better acquire a taste for them quick.
Just convince the Chinese that they are an aphrodesiac. They'll become an endangered species in no time.
This is not a "new threat"; this is extremely common. A quick google comes up with at least 5 similar incidents in 2011 and 2012.
http://www.ibtimes.com/jellyfish-invade-four-nuclear-reactors-japan-israel-scotland-photos-707777
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/04/27/11432974-diablo-canyon-nuclear-plant-in-california-knocked-offline-by-jellyfish-like-creature-called-salp?lite
0x or or snor perron?!
It amuses me that the collective noun (you know, like a "pack" of dogs or a "flock" of birds or a "tantrum" of Representatives) for jellyfish is a "smack".
It's like you can just hear them smashing themselves into water intakes. "SMACK!".
We now return this thread to people with more directly relevant things to write.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Incredible read - thanks for the link.
Since we are being pedantic about language, it is jetsam , not flotsam , that is clogging the pipe. Flotsam is floating debris. If the debris is drifting below the surface, it is jetsam. Since nuke intake pipes are always well below the surface, they cannot be clogged by flotsam.
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.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.