life story is never without obstruction , some you may see from a international nautical mile off ( like a giant , sideways freighter ) while others cabbage up on you . It ’s perhaps even concentrated to see a problem approaching when it ’s made up of translucent , nigh - featurelessocean blob , sleep together to skill assalps . These alien - like organisms ( whoseparasitesliterally inspiredAlien ) are part of the reason turtle unwittingly swallow credit card bag , as they resemble an aimless shred of translucent charge card . You might be surprised to hear , then , that these see - through deep - sea jelly clump have brought to a halt not just one buttwonuclear power nuclear reactor in South Korea this week – not even for the first time this month .
The slaughter is unfolding in South Korea at the Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Company , whose Hanul No . 1 and 2 reactors have been taken offline due to sea slaps clogging the cooling systems . The same inauspicious clangoring bring the two reactor – which each have a capacity of 950 - megawatts – offline for almost a calendar week at the ending of March .
Much like the Ever Given ’s extend halt in the Suez Canal , the salp blockages become more expensive with each twenty-four hours they remain , well , blocked . According to a report fromBloomberg , the holdup has caused a deprivation of power equivalent to $ 21.8 million Charles Frederick Worth of liquidise innate gaseous state , amounting to around 60,000 tons – a intensity that go along to grow while the nuclear reactor remain offline .
A sea salpa on its own might not seem like much of a violence – but , likeapes , salps together strong . These tunicates have abizarre reproduction strategythat can see a unmarried salp get up a cloning factory within itself , producing scores and mark of clone that are genetically ( but not needs physically ) selfsame . A undivided salpa in the cooling system might not be such a bother , but a whole spine of the critter is a very different issue . Weirdly , despite look a lot like jellyfish , salps are in reality more closely related to humans , and we even share some embryonic structures with these animal before specializing in two very different commission .
ocean salp population in the realm of South Korea ’s nuclear power plant usually spike in June , but ( as happened forJapan ’s cherry blossom ) salpageddon can be triggered early by unseasonably warm currents . “ We ca n’t say yet if the surge in salp is due to the changing mood or other divisor , ” said Youn Seok - hyun , a research scientist at National Institute of Fisheries Science toBloomberg . “ It should be affect as a temporary phenomenon unless we see a uninterrupted increase over the next decennary . ”
[ H / T : Futurism ]
