Romania shut down its only nuclear power station, Cernavodă, because the Danube fell too low to cool it, according to the BBC. The broadcaster says the second of the plant’s two 706-megawatt reactors left the grid just before midday on Thursday, Aug. 13, after the first shut in July, and that plant officials said the river dropped so far that the suction nozzles for the water intake could not reach it. Cernavodă supplies about 20% of the country’s electricity, the BBC says, and had shut only once before, in 2003.
Romania’s nuclear regulator, CNCAN, dates the controlled shutdowns to July 28 for Unit 1 and Aug. 13 for Unit 2, calls them a preventive measure under the plant’s nuclear safety procedures, and says they took place “without any radiological consequences” for people or the environment. Plant director Romeo Urjan told AFP, “We do not foresee a restart within the next 10 days,” the BBC reports. The BBC adds that authorities had sunk barges loaded with rocks in the river earlier that week to push more water toward the plant.
The government then turned to river engineering. On Aug. 21, the National Committee for Emergency Situations approved emergency dredging near Cernavodă, a spur dike on the Old Danube to divert flow toward the plant’s intake, high-capacity pumps, and extra releases from reservoirs on the Olt River at about 50 cubic meters per second for five days, according to a government press release. In a Sept. 9 update, CNCAN still described both units as shut and said those river works remain essential before the plant can return to rated power.
The BBC links the low water to prolonged hot weather across Europe and says the Danube fell to its lowest level in 30 years in several countries. It reports that Romania’s hydropower output dropped for the same reason, so evening demand needed imports on top of coal and gas generation.