An invasion of jellyfish causes the stop of a French nuclear power plant – RTS.CH

These automatic judgments of units 2, 3, 4 and 6 “had no consequence on the safety of the facilities, the safety of the personnel or on the environment,” says EDF on his site.

“These judgments are consecutive to the massive and non -predictable presence of jellyfish in the filter drums of the pumping stations, located partly non -nuclear of the installations”, explains the operator.

Central completely stopped

The power station is thus temporarily completely stopped, because its two other production units 1 and 5 are currently under maintenance.

According to EDF, production units No. 2, 3 and 4 automatically stopped on Sunday between 11:00 pm and midnight, “in accordance with safety and protection devices”, and “Unit 6 automatically stopped in turn” on Monday at 6:20 am.

“The central teams are mobilized and currently carrying out the diagnostics and interventions necessary to be able to restart the production units in complete safety,” says EDF. According to a spokesperson for the operator interviewed by AFP, the restart is currently scheduled for Thursday.

“There is no risk of shortage” for the electricity network because of this incident, assured this spokesperson, because other nuclear power plants and other energy sources are currently working, such as solar.

A “fairly rare” situation, but not new

Nuclear reactors paralyzed because of an invasion of jellyfish, it is “quite rare”, but EDF has already known it “in the 1990s”, still according to the spokesperson for the group questioned by AFP.

Similar cases have already occurred, especially in the 2010s, in the United States, Scotland, Sweden and Japan.

The proliferation of these gelatinous and stinging marine animals is due to several factors, including warming oceans with that of the climate, but also overfishing, which eliminates some of their direct predators such as tuna.

AFP/EBZ