Overview
- Romania began a controlled shutdown of Unit 2 at the Cernavodă plant on Thursday after water levels in the Danube fell below safe cooling thresholds, leaving the country’s only nuclear station fully offline.
- Hungary has cut output at its Paks plant to roughly a quarter of capacity and is building a submerged riverbed sill while preparing to sink two rock-filled barges to raise local water levels for short-term cooling.
- Grid operators are covering lost nuclear baseload with electricity imports, restarted coal and lignite units, reservoir hydropower where available, and increased wind output, alongside appeals and mandatory measures to cut demand.
- Both countries used emergency river works — dredging, controlled blasts and sunken barges — which bought only days to weeks of relief and carry clear environmental and navigation trade-offs.
- Experts and officials are now pressing for longer-term fixes, including alternative or hybrid cooling systems, revisions to siting and expansion plans, and investments to make baseload power resilient to recurring drought driven by climate change.