A swarm of nearly 1,000 jellyfish floated into the cooling water cove at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant Tuesday evening. This forced the shutdown of one reactor and the reduction to half power of the second.
These moon jellyfish have been washing ashore for weeks. They say this is a sign that population is booming. The mass of moon jellies clogged the plant’s cooling water intake screens, impairing the ability of pumps to circulate enough cooling water through the system. The bar racks and rolling screens prevent kelp and other large debris from entering the circulation pipes, but these systems can be overwhelmed with a large influx of organic matter. The nuclear plant circulates billions of gallons of seawater daily through its cooling system in order to condense steam that has powered the plant’s two huge electrical generators.
Other plants that use ocean water for cooling have had problems with jellyfish, but this is the first time jellies have caused a shutdown at Diablo Canyon, which dates to the mid-1980s.
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