October 2, 2013

Jellyfish shut down the largest boiling-water nuclear reactor in the world.

In Sweden.

You'd think jellyfish would avoid boiling water, but they went in the cooling water intake pipes, and they would probably be killed by the filtration system. The spokesman said: "There will be no dinner of boiled jellyfish."

9 comments:

Hagar said...

Lutefisk is something like boiled jellyfish, if that's what they are hankering for.

Anonymous said...

The typical installation uses a closed loop fresh water system on the reactor side that does get very hot (e.g. above boiling) as well as an open loop salt water cooling system that never connects with, but cools, the closed loop fresh water system. The open loop does not get hot enough to boil. If it did, salt build-up would be huge...

The best analogy is your car's radiator, except the closed loop there is water/anti-freeze and the open loop is fresh air, not salt water.

Christy said...

Althouse, that boiling water drives the turbines and then must be cooled down before it goes back through the reactor. The cooling water loop is what gets pulled in and, at least in the States, discharged back at just a few degrees higher. Never boils. Aquatic life is usually drawn to the discharge canals.

David said...

Damn. Nuclear scientists.

How about a post on rockets, Althouse.

Wince said...

Obviously, Jellyfish are the "anarchists" and "extortionists" with "bombs strapped to their chests" who shut-down the nuke.

madAsHell said...

The last sentence in the article....

The Oskarshamn nuclear power plant uses the same technology employed at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, where a powerful earthquake and tsunami in 2011 caused the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

.....some kind of dog whistle to protest re-starting the plant.

MadisonMan said...

How about a post on rockets, Althouse.

NASA hardest hit by Govt Shutdown -- according to some graphic I saw. 97% of NASA is furloughed. More than the (cough) vital (cough) Dept of Education!

lonetown said...

Am I the first to notice that the hand carved ice pictured below this article, looks exactly like boiled jellyfish?

Clyde said...

Jellyfish Heaven is a lot like L.A.