Abstract
Recently, there have been an increasing number of reports on the shutdown of coastal nuclear power plants because of outbreaks of marine organisms, such as jellyfish and fish. These organisms clog the pipes during an outbreak or when they accumulate near nuclear power plants in coastal regions. The safety of nuclear power plants is threatened by Acetes blooms. Thus, based on the physiology and ecology of Acetes, including the biology, auxology, feeding ecology, population dynamics, environmental suitability and effects of nuclear power plant thermal effluents, three hypotheses were proposed by previous studies to explain the ecological mechanisms of an Acetes bloom: (1) the wintering ground hypothesis, (2) the population dynamics hypothesis and (3) the ecosystem dynamics hypothesis. The main content and prevention measures used in previous studies were introduced and reviewed. Ecological protection combined with relevant environmental protection policies and laws in coastal areas are the long-term goals for the management of Acetes blooms.
Highlights
Due to the impacts of the eutrophication of coastal waters and global warming, clusters of marine organisms have been developing in these areas, such as algal blooms, red tides, green tides, brown tides and jellyfish blooms
Among the multiple impacts caused by the outbreaks of these marine organisms, blockage of the cooling water inlet of a nuclear power plant is the most prominent and serious one
There have been occasional threats due to marine organism outbreaks that impact the safety of the cooling system of coastal nuclear power plants
Summary
According to the 2015 global nuclear industry report, nuclear power plants around the world in 2014 generated a total of 2410 billion kilowatt-hours, accounting for 10.8% of the world’s total power generation, which was a 2.2% increase compared to that in 2013 (Schneider et al, 2015). The global distribution map of nuclear power plants. Due to the impacts of the eutrophication of coastal waters and global warming, clusters of marine organisms have been developing in these areas, such as algal blooms, red tides, green tides, brown tides and jellyfish blooms. Among the multiple impacts caused by the outbreaks of these marine organisms, blockage of the cooling water inlet of a nuclear power plant is the most prominent and serious one. There have been occasional threats due to marine organism outbreaks that impact the safety of the cooling system of coastal nuclear power plants. In September 2013, a jellyfish clogging incident at the Oskarshamn plant in Sweden was caused by a large number of Aurelia aurita.
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