Don't get sucked in - A deadly silence.

When we were very young, we were taken as a Christmas treat to a pantomime.  Part of the show usually had a scene where the hero or heroine had just chased away a bad character and had resumed the story.  They then faced the audience and said "You'll let me know if they come back again, won't you?"
Charged with this unusual and fearsome responsibility, when the baddie reappeared, the kids would be sitting on the edge of their seats shouting "Look behind you!" 
The hero or heroine would pretend not to hear until the volume became huge, by which time the baddie had disappeared, and when they looked round, they came back to face the kids with "I can't see anyone!" and got on with the story.
The baddie would reappear, this time to the left or right, and the same farce would be played with the kids getting more and more frustrated at the adult stupidity, the hero or heroine turning round a second after the baddie had adroitly skipped sides and the kids had been shouting their lungs out, "He's on the left." Even to the smallest child, it surely seemed complicit.
Well, today is World Oceans Day, and I am just as frustrated as I was then as a small child. You can join any number of worthy organisations to protest against over fishing of the seas and plastic polution...and quite rightly so...  You can protest with The Pew Charitable Trusts, become a wave maker with Oceana, or a Seachampion with the Marine Conservation Society in the UK. If you are a famous film star you might be invited to take all your clothes off and be photographed nuzzling up to a dead fish by the Fishlove Campaign .
Now I might be wrong, and if I am, I apologise, but as far as I can see, there is not a word there, I mean seriously, not a word, about the millions and millions and millions of fish eggs and fish and other small marine animals killed annually by the once-through cooling systems of nuclear power plants. Not a word.
On behalf of the fish I would like to take the stage, and before I am hauled down for spoiling the show, give you some facts.
According to the Sierra Club,
 "A single power plant can obliterate billions of fish eggs and larvae and millions of adult fish in a single year," They produced a very readable, long, document, "Giant Fishblenders:How power plants kill fish and damage our waterways (and what can be done to stop them)."
and there is a very short, thought provoking piece written in 2008 about work done by Dr. Peter Henderson.
He mentions Dungeness Nuclear Power Station in the U.K. where outfall pipes have become clogged with dead fish. “We are talking as many as 250 million fish in as little as five hours,” Dr. Henderson said. This is the link and there are more detailed ones below the blog. 
What happens is this: Fish and animals that are sucked in, which are too big to go through the filter screens, are smashed and mutilated when they come up against the screens. It's known as impingement. Fish, other little animals, larvae, and millions of eggs, which are small enough to go through the 1cm mesh screens, go through the cooling pipes and according to Dr. Henderson, many die after being heated to 30 C, chlorinated and given small doses of radiation. This process of going through the cooling pipes is called entrainment.
In the Southern Region of the North Sea the calculated mortality of eggs and young for sole was so high that it had been equal to 46% of commercial fishing, Herring mortality off parts of the East Coast of the U.K. was 50% of commercial landings. 
As I understand it, any power plants that use water for once-through cooling, cause problems, but nuclear power plants pull in huge amounts of water.
If you wonder what it's like to be entrained, there is a graphic description in another really excellent document, "Licensed to Kill" by NIRS.. "How the nuclear power industry  destroys endangered marine wildlife and ocean habitat to save money." A diver called Bill Lamm suffered nightmarish and life threatening entrainment in the St. Lucie nuclear power plant in Florida  in 1989 (See page 34). 
It's the sort of stuff disaster movies are made out of. 
For some of the fish around Fukushima, a different disaster movie is already happening and if this seems far away, don't forget that in Europe the nuclear power industry is allowed to discharge nuclear waste into the sea, by building kilometres of underwater pipes through which radioactive effluent now flows freely into the sea; something which would be banned if this same waste was in containers! Links: http://enenews.com/tv-plutonium-being-pumped-ocean-miles-underwater-pipes-nuclear-waste-left-lying-beach-kids-playing-sand-machines-scoop-plutonium-day-video-photos  and  http://www.psr.org/nuclear-bailout/resources/nuclear-power-in-france-setting.pdf 
 So who will join me on stage and shout "Look behind you!" before it's all too late and the lights go out on the last fish? 

Sources: http://vault.sierraclub.org/pressroom/media/2011/2011-08-fish-blenders.pdf
 http://wildsingaporenews.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/nuclear-plants-sucking-sea-life-from.html#.VXYEOUZKWf_
  http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/licensedtokill/LiscencedtoKill.pdf
http://consult.pisces-conservation.com/2-paper001.html
http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/ocean/cwa316/rcnfpp/docs/foe_cmmnts_to_bechtel.pdf
http://www.treehugger.com/clean-water/giant-bass-o-matic-power-plants-killing-millions-of-great-lakes-fish.html
http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/thirsty-nukes-cant-take-the-heat.html