A swarm of jellyfish has caused major disruption at one of France's largest nuclear power plants, for the second time in a month.
The jellyfish entered the filters of the pumping station at the Paluel nuclear plant, according to France's national energy firm, EDF. This intrusion has significantly decreased the plant's output by 2.4 gigawatts, prompting crews to embark on efforts to restore it to its full operational capacity.
The recent disruption follows an incident in August, where another major nuclear site in France, the Gravelines plant, faced operations halting due to a massive and unpredictable swarm of jellyfish.
The jellyfish incident has led to a near halving of Paluel's total output of 5.2 gigawatts after one of its reactors was shut down and a second was reduced as a precautionary measure. Nuclear energy constitutes about 70% of France's power consumption, according to the World Nuclear Association (WNA).
Paluel is among France's leading nuclear power plants, with each of its four units producing over 1,300 megawatts of electricity. In a statement, EDF indicated that they implemented these measures at 21:00 local time after the jellyfish arrived in the filters of the non-nuclear part of the facility. The company noted that its teams were actively conducting the necessary diagnostics and interventions to reestablish full functionality of the affected reactors.
