More than 5,000 bags caught in 8 days! A power plant was "massively invaded" by jellyfish. What's the reason?

"There is no way to catch them all! There is no way to catch them all!" Recently, the Zhejiang Energy Jiaxing Power Plant in Pinghu City, Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, was attacked by a large number of jellyfish, causing the machines to trip frequently. The employees are fighting wits and courage with the jellyfish every day, staging a "pump room defense battle".

What caused this jellyfish tide? Why did the jellyfish tide have such a big impact on the power plant? What other potential impacts does the "jellyfish crisis" have?

The Zhejiang Energy Jiaxing Power Plant is flooded with jellyfish, and employees have caught 210,000 kilograms

Zhejiang Energy Jiaxing Power Plant is located in Liuliwan on the north bank of Qiantang River in Pinghu City, Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, and faces Hangzhou Bay to the southeast. It is the largest coal-fired power plant in East China and the second largest coal-fired power plant in the country.

The Zhejiang Energy Jiaxing Power Plant was recently attacked by a large number of jellyfish. The No. 2 circulating pump room of the power plant was the area hardest hit. The main task of the 30 workers on site every day at work is to catch jellyfish.

The circulating pump room of the power plant is built on the seashore, and its function is to pump seawater to cool the generator sets. The jellyfish outbreak made it difficult for the self-cleaning system of the circulating pump room to cope with it. In order to prevent the cooling water from being blocked, the workers had to work in three shifts, catching jellyfish in front of the rotating filter screen 24 hours a day.

Regarding the jellyfish infestation, Xi Chao, head of the power plant maintenance department, introduced that Shanghai's Caojing Power Plant and Lingang Power Plant had encountered a jellyfish infestation in August. They had heard about the high jellyfish production this year, but no one expected it to be on such a large scale.

"On September 18, Typhoon 'Bebejia' had already left. At around 4 or 5 in the morning, the duty manager called me and said that two rotary filters had tripped. I thought it was a routine problem, so I urgently repaired and replaced them. At around 6 o'clock, the third rotary filter also tripped. I felt something was wrong at the time," said Xi Chao.

As jellyfish tides continued to arrive, the 14 circulating pump units occasionally tripped due to overload, and maintenance workers had to stay on duty all night.

Sun Chunwei, a maintenance specialist at Zhejiang Zheneng Jiahua Power Generation Co., Ltd.: We have been repairing the equipment, walking an average of 20,000 steps a day. I have been working all night for three days and basically never stopped. Once the filter is blocked, the circulating pump will stop working, and eventually the unit will stop. Xi Chao said that the jellyfish tide has brought considerable pressure to the normal operation of the power plant equipment: "Our units must first be forced to reduce power generation. For example, if they can generate 1 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, they can only reduce it by 500,000 kilowatt-hours. From September 18 to September 25, the power plant has caught a total of about 5,250 bags and 210,000 kilograms of jellyfish.

Fishermen have been organized to go to the seaside to carry out fishing operations, and the number of jellyfish is decreasing.

In the past few days, the power plant's jellyfish cleaning staff worked in three shifts, with at least 400 to 500 bags of jellyfish being cleared out of the factory every day. At the worst time, the jellyfish bags packed in the morning covered the entire floor of the machine room, and had to be transported away by a forklift.

Xi Chao said that the jellyfish would go rancid after being caught and stored for a short time, so they could only dispose of them with kitchen waste. Because the quantity was too large, the local sanitation station could not accept it.

What worries Xi Chao and his colleagues the most is that the jellyfish are mixed in variety, and they can't tell which ones are edible and which ones are not, so they dare not let anyone take them away easily. "This is the first time we have encountered such a situation in 30 years since the establishment of the plant. We can't solve the problem by ourselves, so we sought help from outside."

△On the afternoon of September 27, fishermen started fishing operations.

Qi Zhengwang, head of the Marine Management Section of the Pinghu Natural Resources and Planning Bureau, said that Pinghu City has organized fishermen to go to the seaside to carry out fishing operations:

The first is to increase the number of boats to temporarily block the water intake to prevent the entry of jellyfish. Five boats are already on the scene.

The second is for a third party to come up with a plan to build a fence and use a net to keep the jellyfish outside the water intake.

At the same time, the Natural Resources and Planning Bureau of Pinghu City, Zhejiang Province commissioned the East China Sea Monitoring Center to conduct inspections and conduct on-site inspections of the localized outbreaks of jellyfish.

On the evening of September 27, staff at Zhejiang Energy Jiaxing Power Plant reported that according to monitoring data from the East China Sea Monitoring Center, the number of jellyfish has been decreasing and fishing boats are also having an effect.

Experts: Jellyfish outbreaks may be related to environmental changes. Power generation companies can take some protective measures in advance

Xu Kaida, an expert from Zhejiang Ocean University, believes that the large-scale reproduction of jellyfish may have a lot to do with environmental changes. "Overall, compared with last year, the ocean temperature has risen this year. Jellyfish grow and develop at the turn of spring and summer, and this year's temperature is suitable for their growth and development."

Tian Kuo, a lecturer at the College of Fisheries of Zhejiang Ocean University, believes that climate change, ocean acidification, and eutrophication can all lead to jellyfish outbreaks. "In the East China Sea, water temperature and salinity are the main factors driving the jellyfish outbreak. In addition, the recent typhoons have increased the amount of plankton, which has also induced a concentrated outbreak of jellyfish in this area."

Xu Kaida said that the annual reproduction and release may also lead to a surge in the number of jellyfish in a certain year.

Xu Kaida: Hangzhou Bay has been releasing jellyfish seedlings every year for more than 10 years. After some jellyfish grow up in the sea, they will be caught by fishermen, and some jellyfish will leave their parents in the sea to reproduce the next generation. The cumulative effect of long-term release is also one of the reasons why there are more jellyfish this year. What impact will the large-scale reproduction of jellyfish bring? Xu Kaida believes that this year's situation is somewhat accidental and requires long-term monitoring. "We will monitor for 2 to 3 years to see what impact it has on the ecology, such as whether there are fewer other fish species and an imbalance in the ecological chain. So far, no major problems have been found."

Xu Kaida suggested that thermal or nuclear power generation companies could entrust relevant professional departments to carry out monitoring and early warning work in advance, make predictions, and it is necessary to take some protective measures.

Source: CCTV News WeChat Official Account