Romania may close nuclear reactor - Danube River levels drop to minimum
Romanian state-owned nuclear power producer Nuclearelectrica could shut down its last operating reactor on August 13th, as levels in the Danube River continue to fall, despite efforts to divert cooling water to the plant.
Record low river levels forced Nuclearelectrica to shut down a reactor in late July. The company has two reactors at Cernavoda on the Danube that account for a fifth of the country's power generation.
Romania has taken unprecedented measures to keep the country's only operational reactor running, including blasting a rock barrier out of the water, dredging the riverbed and sinking barges filled with rocks in the Danube to redirect flows around the power plant.
"The possibility of a controlled shutdown (of the second reactor) is based on monitoring weather forecasts for the coming period, the decline in Danube levels and operational parameters," Nuclearelectrica said.
Levels of the Danube, Europe's second-longest river, had fallen to a new minimum level of 1,370 cubic meters of water per second at its entry point in Romania on Tuesday, a director at the state water management agency said, adding that the closure was "inevitable".
Romania has declared a state of energy emergency for the entire month of August and has asked companies and households to voluntarily reduce consumption during peak evening hours. The government has prepared a system to cut electricity to industrial consumers in stages and with advance notice if necessary.
Further upstream, neighboring Hungary began restarting a turbine at the Paks nuclear power plant on Monday after a rise in Danube water levels. However, the rain upstream would not make any difference for Romania, the last country through which the Danube flows before entering the Black Sea, the water management agency said.
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