Jellyfish and Seaweed Surveillance (JaSS)

Jellyfish and Seaweed Surveillance (JASS), is designed to address the acute problem of the partner (EDF energy) regarding jellyfish and seaweed debris ingress into the water intakes of coastal nuclear power plants. These events have the potential to overload the water intake systems' capacity to filter out debris potentially leading to a temporary shut-down of the affected power plant.

JaSS aims to deliver an early warning system based on two approaches. For the ingression of jellyfish we will develop a habitat model, a model that defines the type of environment conditions preferred by an organism, which can be combined with satellite monitoring to detect conditions conducive to jellyfish blooms. For seaweed ingression we will make use of novel, high resolution satellite products (Sentinel program) to detect and track clouds of seaweed detritus in the water surrounding the power plant.

The outputs will be used by EDF energy to monitor the water and put preventive measures in place when the risk of marine debris ingress is high. This will reduce the need to shut-down a power plant, saving the company money and ensuring stable energy delivery across the UK power grid. It also has potential to be applied to other sectors of industry that are at risk from these kinds of events such as offshore energy, tourism, and desalination.

JaSS outputs will be used across EDF Energy's fleet of UK coastal nuclear power stations, to predict severe ingress events. Each station operates its own daily risk analysis for marine ingress, but currently there are no accurate tools to inform this process. In most cases the first indication that a station has a severe ingress event is when cooling water supply is suddenly and severely constrained.

The new outputs, provided by this project, will greatly increase the confidence of the daily risk analysis, thereby allowing a range of proactive and/or precautionary actions and decisions which are not currently possible. For example, a proactive reduction in reactor load will correspondingly reduce cooling water demand, allowing the cooling water intake system to deal effectively with a reduced marine ingress burden (of jellyfish or seaweed). Other such actions include assigning additional staff and resources to be ready to deal with the predicted ingress.

In this way, the improved risk analysis will potentially lead to significantly reduced losses in electricity generation, to the National Grid, and significant financial benefits to EDF Energy. Ultimately, the new technology could be applied to a range of different operators and industries around the globe, as the marine ingress problem (particularly jellyfish blooms) is predicted to be exacerbated with global change.