UNITED STATES – Record summer heat and drought in Europe have seriously interrupted nuclear power generation, necessitating extraordinary emergency steps to safeguard national electricity infrastructures. In Romania, state power producer Nuclearelectrica was forced to shut down its only operational reactor at the Cernavoda plant due to critically low water levels on the Danube River, despite extreme measures such as dredging, sinking barges, and detonating riverbed explosives to increase cooling flow. Similar hydrological limits hampered Hungary’s Paks plant and compelled France’s EDF to reduce reactor output, exacerbated by a major jellyfish influx that shut down three coastal reactors at Gravelines. Beyond energy infrastructure pressure, Dutch bank Triodos forecasts that heat-related productivity loss, transport disruptions, and rising power prices could cost the European Union EUR 180 billion (USD 207.7 billion), nearly wiping out the bloc’s anticipated 1% GDP growth in 2026.
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(Source: CNBC)
