It is the most powerful nuclear power plant in Western Europe, six reactors of 900 megawatts, do you realize? No, we do not realize but another figure will enlighten us: a single reactor supplies electricity 500,000 homes for a month and it will be even more by 2040 with the entry into action of two “new generation” equipment.
The EDF power station in Gravelines, in the North, is the “dynamo” of the economic and human activity of Dunkirk and beyond. It is therefore archi-surge. Everything is anticipated, measured, analyzed. No intruders, if riquiqui may be, no grain of sand can stop the big machine. But precisely, it is from the sea, essential for the cooling of the reactors, that the problem came.
An emergency procedure at the heart of summer, all because of an army of gelatinous critters. As we know, the jellyfish are the enemy of bathers, who rubs it stings and burns. We knew less that they were a potential nightmare for nuclear power plants … No one saw anything coming. We speak of “massive and non -predictable presence”, a bench of several thousand invaders sneaking into the drums of pumping stations which aspire sea water. Who rubs it does not filter anything. Everything is stopped. A restart is hoped for at best this Thursday. “It had already happened here in the 90s,” said an EDF spokesperson.
And more recently in the United States, Scotland, Sweden, Japan … This kind of incident, which recalls the fragility of these facilities in the face of natural vagaries, could multiply. The climatic disruption is in the viewfinder, which promotes the proliferation of these sneaky sea creatures. The overfishing also, with the elimination of tons and tons of tuna, direct predators of jellyfish. In both cases, do not look, it is the fault of man. Does that surprise you?
