A huge cluster of jellyfish forced one of the world's largest nuclear reactors to shut down Sunday, in what is a more common occurrence.
"It's true that there seems to be more and more of these extreme cases of blooming jellyfish," Lene Moller, a researcher at the Swedish Institute for the Marine Environment told the Associated Press. "But it's very difficult to say if there are more jellyfish, because there is no historical data.
"It's one of the species that can bloom in extreme areas that . . . are overfished or have bad conditions," he said. "The moon jelly likes these types of waters. They don't care if there are algae blooms, they don't care if the oxygen concentration is low. The fish leave . . . and (the moon jelly) can really take over the ecosystem."
Workers operating the Oskarshamn Nuclear Power Plant in southeastern Sweden had to quickly clear out the plant's third reactor when tons of jellyfish stopped up the pipes that deliver cool water to the plant's turbines the AP reported.
It wasn't a tsunami, but it had the same effect: A huge cluster of jellyfish forced one of the world's largest nuclear reactors to shut down - a phenomenon that marine biologists say could become more common.
Everything was cleaned out by Tuesday, but engineers were still preparing to restart the 1,400-megawatt reactor.
According to the AP, the plant's reactors, which are boiling water types, use the same technology as the ones at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant, which experienced a catastrophic failure in 2011 after a tsunami went over its walls, and flooded its equipment.
The Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California had a jellyfish problem in 2012 after it had to shut down its second reactor after sea salp or a species that looks like a jellyfish blocked intake pipes. A few years earlier, Oskarshamn had to be shut off completely because of a a swarm of jellyfish.
