Jelly Jam

The animal uprising took another strange turn this week when squadrons of jellyfish viciously attacked the cooling water intakes at the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka prefecture, Japan. The heaving mass of gelatinous monsters jammed up the intakes and caused the plant to reduce power.

"It's the first time we have had to lower power output because of jellyfish," a Chubu Electric Power Co. spokesman said.

The water intake at Chubu Electric's Hamaoka power plant in Shizuoka prefecture, about 150 km (90 miles) southwest of Tokyo, stopped automatically on Wednesday when the slippery customers got blocked in a filtering device.

Without enough seawater coming in to the cooling system, Chubu Electric had to lower the output of two of the reactors at the plant to 60-70 percent of capacity.

Output returned to normal by the evening after the company removed the jellyfish, the spokesman said.

And as if that wasn't enough to frighten you, more giant jellyfish are attacking the Japanese fishing industry!

Japan's fishing communities have been plagued by schools of giant jellyfish in recent years, prompting local governments to seek new ways to dispose of the problem.

Just wait until they send the whales against the intakes. That'll be ugly.