Cernavodă NPP — Unit 1 shut down, Unit 2 at imminent risk as record-low Danube threatens cooling

What happened

A severe drought and heatwave drove the Danube River to record-low levels, cutting the cooling water available to Romania's only nuclear plant, Cernavodă. Unit 1 was shut down and disconnected from the grid on the morning of 28 July 2026; Unit 2 was initially expected to follow but was kept online after an analysis found its operating parameters still allowed safe continued operation. Authorities also blew up an underwater rock formation near Izvoarele to try to divert more river flow toward the plant's cooling intake. The same power crunch led Romania's government to ask roughly 80 major industrial electricity users to cut consumption; Dacia and Ford both temporarily halted production at their Romanian car plants (using the pause for planned maintenance) until 19 August, a step officials said would save about 200 MW. The drought produced parallel effects elsewhere on the Danube: Hungary shut its only nuclear plant, Paks, entirely (see the separate Paks record), while Bulgaria's Kozloduy plant continued operating at planned capacity, with Bulgarian officials coordinating with Serbia to release water from the Djerdap 1 (Iron Gates) dam upstream to keep river levels above Kozloduy's cooling threshold. The Danube's flow in Romania fell to an all-time low of about 1,400 cubic metres per second on 6 August, roughly a third of the usual August average. With Unit 2 now the country's only operating reactor, plant director Romeo Urjan said it would likely have to shut within five to six days without further intervention; Romania's navy detonated another rock obstruction and the state water agency rushed to sink four rock-filled barges into the river to build an underwater barrier redirecting flow toward the plant, a measure Urjan said could extend operation to nine or ten days if it works, though the sinking was itself delayed a day by unsafe conditions. Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan said a staged, pre-notified industrial power-cut plan was ready but not expected to be needed for five to seven days, or for as long as Unit 2 keeps running. Analysts (ING Bank) cautioned that these river interventions are emergency stopgaps, not a substitute for new generation capacity or grid investment. No radiological release was reported at any of the three plants; this is a drought-driven operational and cooling-water event, not a nuclear-safety accident.