Sea creatures wreak nuclear plant operations in South Korea

Sea salps are gelatinous, marine organisms that resemble jellyfish,  they are typically less than 10cm tall.

The little creatures proved to be a major pest to South Korea’s nuclear industry.

The creatures have clogged water systems used to cool Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co’s Hanul No. 1 and No. 2 reactors, forcing them to shut Tuesday (April 6), the second time in less than three weeks the units were taken offline due to sea salps.

The reactors, each with 950-megawatts capacity, were shut down for about a week in late March.

The longer the shutdowns last  the more expensive they will become. According to BloombergNEF analyst Olympe Mattei, if the initial eight-day outage was offset with generation from liquefied natural gas, a 60,000-ton cargo of the supercooled fuel would cost roughly US$21.8 million (S$29.23 million).