Record low Danube levels push some countries in Eastern Europe to the brink of energy emergency

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Numerous governments across Central and Eastern Europe are taking steps to conserve electricity and avert an energy crisis as record low water levels on the Danube River have forced power plants to the brink of shutting down.

Persistent drought and successive extreme heat waves have deprived one of Europe’s largest rivers of water, pushing the Danube’s levels in Hungary’s capital, Budapest, to around 4 incheson Monday, well below the previous all-time low of 13 inchesset in 2018.

Water levels are not expected to rise on the Danube in the coming days or even weeks as no significant rainfall is forecast, and as a renewed extreme heat wave bears down on the region with daytime highs topping 100 degrees , electricity and water use are on the rise.

Hungary’s Paks nuclear plant on brink of shutdown

The Danube’s record low levels have pushed Hungary’s only nuclear power plant, the Soviet-built, four-reactor plant at Paks, to the brink of powering down entirely for the first time in its 44 years in service.

The Paks plant, which uses water from the Danube to cool its reactors, on Monday was producing only 240 megawatts of power rather than the usual 2,000 because of successive power-downs of its four reactors.

Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar said engineers managed to keep the plant’s final operating turbine temporarily running, averting an expected shutdown on the weekend. A full power-down likely will happen only on Tuesday or Wednesday, he said.

“This is very good news, because the complete shutdown of the Paks power plant can still be avoided, at least temporarily, on one of the biggest consumption days,” he said in video posted to Facebook.

Hungary’s government last week asked major industrial users to curb their electricity consumption and sought voluntary savings from households in order to conserve supply, particularly in peak demand hours between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m.

While conservation measures initially were voluntary, Magyar’s government on Saturday issued a decree allowing for them to be made mandatory for large industrial or commercial consumers.

He said Monday that the conservation push resulted in 700 fewer megawatts of electricity being used the previous day and thanked Hungarians for their efforts.

Serbia and Romania grapple with low Danube levels

Meanwhile, plants in neighboring countries also have had dramatic drops in power generation as well as disruptions to shipping and agriculture.

Romania’s military on Monday used 397 poundsof explosives to blast rock near the lower Danube’s Bala Canal in an effort to redirect water into the river’s main channel and toward the state-owned Cernavoda nuclear power plant.

The Danube’s water flow has fallen to 1,500 cubic meters per second in Romania, less than a third of its July average. Authorities already shut down one reactor unit at the Cernavoda plant, which is operating at about half its normal capacity.

Acting Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan announced a nationwide state of alert in the energy sector on Friday and warned that the Danube’s low water levels threatened the shutdown of Cernavoda’s second reactor. He appealed to citizens to voluntarily limit electricity usage in peak evening hours.

In Serbia, record-low Danube levels have pushed the country’s key hydroelectric plant to operate with only 20% of its capacity, prompting Prime Minister Djuro Macut to preside over an emergency meeting on Monday focusing on energy problems.

Spike writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press writers Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia, and Stephen McGrath in Leamington Spa, England, contributed to this report.