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In 2012, smaller jellyfish-like creatures known as sea salps flooded the intake valves at a nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo, California, forcing a shutdown."The event began Tuesday when southerly winds began blowing the salps into the plant’s cooling water intake cove," The San Luis Tribune reported at the time. "Plant operators noticed differences in water pressure at the intake structure, indicating the salps were beginning to clog the rolling screens in front of the intake."The same thing has since happened to Japanese nuclear power plants, and will likely happen again. In fact, it's been happening as long as we've had power plants that needed cooling down.According to Steve Haddock, of the Monterrey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, power plants were getting shut down by jellyfish as far back as 1937, when they smothered an Australian plant."Only when you have a huge influx of jellies do they overwhelm the flumes," he told Live Science, and explained that plants are already equipped to filter out the sea creatures. Unfortunately, that tends to happen a lot, especially when massive blooms of jellyfish are under way—it may not be "the newest threat to nuke plants," but it's a serious one, and well worth being aware of.