Jellyfish cause nuclear reactor shutdown

A huge cluster of jellyfish forced one of the world’s largest nuclear reactors to shut down. Operators of the Oskarshamn 3 nuclear plant (pictured) in southeastern Sweden, said production at […]

A huge cluster of jellyfish forced one of the world’s largest nuclear reactors to shut down.

Operators of the Oskarshamn 3 nuclear plant (pictured) in southeastern Sweden, said production at the facility was manually shut and disconnected from the grid as a result of “a large amount of jellyfish present at the cooling water intake”.

OKG said the decision was made for safety measures so the unit – which has a total capacity of 1,400MW and is believed to be Sweden’s largest electricity production plant – did not automatically shut down.

Last month the reactor also suffered operational disturbances due to a number of “separate independent failures” in the facility.

The pipes are now cleaned of the jellyfish and engineers are preparing to restart the reactor, according to reports.

Last month Japan’s only operating nuclear reactor was switched off, leaving the country with no nuclear power supply.

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