Overview
- Romania began a controlled shutdown of Unit 2 at the Cernavodă plant on Thursday, leaving the country's sole nuclear facility fully offline while the Energy Ministry says supply will be met by imports and alternative generation.
- Authorities had earlier used emergency riverworks including rock blasting, dredging and sinking four rock-filled barges to try to redirect water toward Cernavodă but water levels fell below the thresholds needed for safe operation.
- Hungary's Paks plant has cut output sharply because of the same low Danube flows and the government said it will build a riverbed sill and may sink barges to raise local levels to avoid a full shutdown.
- Copernicus data show roughly two-thirds of the Danube recorded July flows at multi-decade lows and operators across Europe, including EDF in France, have cut or paused reactor output for water-temperature or ecological reasons.
- The crisis has accelerated debate over adaptations such as hybrid cooling or cooling towers, major river engineering for planned reactor sites, and near-term measures like industrial curbs and evening demand reduction to protect grids.