{"id":871830,"date":"2026-08-24T16:48:35","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T14:48:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=871830"},"modified":"2026-08-24T16:48:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T14:48:38","slug":"dead-fish-with-herpes-giving-eskom-a-major-headache","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/871830\/dead-fish-with-herpes-giving-eskom-a-major-headache\/","title":{"rendered":"Dead fish with herpes giving Eskom a major headache"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A buildup of dead sardines, likely due to a herpesvirus outbreak off South Africa\u2019s coast, slashed electricity generation from the continent\u2019s only nuclear power plant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>State power utility Eskom halved output from one of two units at the 1,800-megawatt Koeberg plant near Cape Town, it said in a statement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other unit is currently offline for maintenance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis controlled adjustment happened after a cooling pump automatically turned off due to the buildup of marine material in the seawater intake area,\u201d Eskom said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere is currently an increase in sardine mortality along the southwestern and west coast.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>South Africa has been trying to determine why the fish are dying, with preliminary results indicating that it may be due to an infection with pilchard herpesvirus, the environment department said on 23 August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eskom said the water intake area will be cleared and normal power generation resumed.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A buildup of dead sardines, likely due to a herpesvirus outbreak off South Africa\u2019s coast, slashed electricity generation from the continent\u2019s only nuclear power plant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":871385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"posted","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"2091900599692325055","_sma_facebook_post_id":"191437357620492_2185391355614597","_sma_instagram_post_id":"18071873612538323","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-871830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871830"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":871832,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871830\/revisions\/871832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/871385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}