A late-summer kelp bloom on the intake screens
Warm water and a run of calm days sent more drift kelp than usual into the offshore intake. The traveling screens handled it, and every strand went back to the sea.
The station draws its cooling water through an intake 2,100 feet offshore, on the sea floor, with a velocity cap that keeps fish from being pulled in. What does arrive is drift kelp, and in a warm, calm late summer a great deal of it. For about a week this year the traveling screens at the intake structure ran continuously instead of on their usual cycle, and the differential pressure across them was the most-watched number on the Unit 2 panel.
Both units stayed at full power. The screens lift the kelp out of the flow, a wash spray returns it to a sluice, and the sluice carries it back to the ocean on the discharge side. Nothing is landfilled and nothing is cut: the bloom is part of the estuary and the near shore, and it goes back to them.
The estuary program's divers surveyed the intake structure after the bloom passed and found the fish return system clear and the velocity cap intact. The kelp forest off Cape Blanco is in good health, which is the point.
More about the intake, the screens and the water temperature monitoring on the environment page.
Questions about this notice go to the Communications & Community office, (696) 412-0540, community@oregonnuclear.com. All notices.
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