The Danube has reached historic lows, with water levels in Budapest dropping to around 10 centimeters on Monday, well below the previous record low of 33 centimeters set in 2018. Hungary’s Paks nuclear plant, which provides nearly half of the country’s electricity production, saw its output fall to 240 megawatts from the usual 2,000 megawatts, putting it on the brink of a complete shutdown for the first time in its 44 years of operation. In Serbia, the country’s main hydroelectric plant is operating at only 20 percent of its capacity. In Romania, the Danube’s flow has dropped to 1,500 cubic meters per second, less than a third of its July average, and one unit at the Cernavoda nuclear plant has already been shut down. Hungarian, Serbian, and Romanian governments have all called for voluntary or mandatory reductions in electricity consumption.
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