A "massive influx of jellyfish" has brought two reactors at the Gravelines nuclear power plant to a halt.
EDF, which operates this nuclear plant on the shore of the North Sea, said generating units 3 and 4 had automatically shut down. The cause was jellyfish being drawn into the plant's filtration system.
According to the company, the "situation has no impact on the safety of the facilities, the safety of staff or on the environment".
Earlier this year, four of its reactors were also shut down for a similar reason. It took around ten days for all of them to be reconnected to the national grid.
Jellyfish regularly appear along the northern French coastline on a seasonal basis. But reports of large shoals in this area every summer are becoming more frequent, partly as a result of climate change.
Record unavailability across the French nuclear fleet
While the incident itself is minor, the shutdown of three reactors at Gravelines, western Europe's largest nuclear power station, will significantly affect electricity generation.
At present only one reactor at the site, unit 6, is still operating. The fifth reactor is offline for scheduled maintenance.
In a broader context, France's nuclear fleet has reached a record level of outages linked to drought and heatwaves, according to AFP calculations. Two units at the Chooz plant in the Ardennes, for example, are currently paused. The Meuse river, which supplies its cooling water, is at a level that is too low to be used.
Heatwaves and drought are affecting nuclear power stations across Europe. On 2 August Hungary announced it was shutting down its only nuclear plant because water levels in the Danube were too low. It was the first time in 44 years that the plant had been deliberately taken offline.
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