Hungary’s only nuclear plant faces first full shutdown in 44 years, exposing Europe’s energy vulnerability

Hungary is about to lose nearly half its electricity supply. The country’s sole nuclear power plant, Paks, is heading toward a complete shutdown for the first time since it began operating in the early 1980s, all because the Danube River is running dry. Prime Minister Péter Magyar warned that the plant “will be completely shut down” imminently, with the outage potentially stretching on for several weeks. For a facility that normally cranks out around 2 GW of power and covers close to half the nation’s electricity needs, that’s not a minor inconvenience. What’s actually happening at Paks Nuclear reactors need water. The Danube River provides the cooling water that keeps Paks’ four Soviet-designed reactors from overheating, and water levels have plummeted to 28 cm below the previous record low set in 2018. Output has been gradually throttled down as conditions worsened, falling to roughly 240 MW in recent days. That’s about 12% of the facility’s normal capacity. A full shutdown is expected to commence as early as Sunday, August 2, 2026. The phased capacity reductions began in late July as the drought intensified across the region. The estimated economic toll of the crisis could land ...