France: jellyfish stop the nuclear power plant in Gravelines

Four units of the largest nuclear power plant in Western Europe, located in the north of France, are stopped on Monday due to the “massive and non -predictable presence of jellyfish”, in the water pumping stations used to cool the reactors, the EDF electricity company announced.

These automatic judgments “had no consequences for the safety of facilities, the safety of the staff or 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.

The Gravelines power station is thus temporarily completely stopped, because its two other production units are currently in maintenance. According to EDF, three production units automatically stopped on Sunday between 11 p.m. and midnight, “in accordance with safety and protection devices”, and another unit “automatically stopped” 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.

Located by the North Sea, Gravelines is the largest nuclear power plant in Western Europe by its number of reactors and its production capacity (6 pressurized water reactors of 900 megawatts each). The power station must also accommodate two new generation reactors (EPR2) of 1600 MW each by 2040.

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 running, such as solar.

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.