Jellyfish shut down nuclear reactors

Posted: 20th October 2026

Several tons of jellyfish packed the seawater filters at a nuclear plant on France’s northern coast, and three reactors shut down automatically. The alarm at the coastal plant came from the water, not the core. Pumps that normally pull in a steady, boring flow of seawater began choking instead.
Inside the filter drums, something soft and pale was piling up by the ton.
It was not sand, not seaweed, not debris from a storm. It was jellyfish, drifting in on an ordinary summer tide. By the time the night was over, three reactors had shut themselves down and a fourth was running at half power. Gelatinous animals have stalled coastal plants elsewhere too.
Sweden’s Oskarshamn lost a unit to a sudden jellyfish influx in 2005 and again in 2013, when tons of moon jellyfish clogged the cooling intake of its largest reactor. Scotland’s Torness shut down in 2011, and California’s Diablo Canyon took a unit offline in 2012 after salps, jellyfish like relatives, packed its intake pipes.

The Pulse 17th Oct 2026

https://www.ecoportal.net/en/france-s-northern-several-tons-jellyfish/43014/