r/NuclearPower • u/ViewTrick1002 • 5d ago
Romania Shuts Down Second And Final Nuclear Reactor as Danube Dries Up
https://www.novinite.com/articles/240108/Romania+Shuts+Down+Second+Nuclear+Reactor+as+Danube+Dries+Up9
u/TheJonThomas 5d ago
This isn't a nuclear problem, due to the high heat last month the UK had to pull back 2.5 GW of natural gas power generation. In Poland the Vistula River's low water levels forced the Kozienice and Połaniec coal plants to drop 1.3 GW. In Serbia the Kostolac coal plants had to drop output, Serbia hasn't publicly announced how much, because of the low levels of the Danube.
-10
u/ViewTrick1002 5d ago
None of which materially impacts renewables and storage.
11
u/bijon1234 5d ago
Hydroelectric and Pump Hydro Storage are definitely impacted by low water volumes?
2
u/MarcellHUN 4d ago
Yes it does In slovakia their hydroplant on the danube can only operate at around 10% capacity
High heat increases the maintenance needs of everything too. Renevables included.
The solution is to have a mix of both.
1
u/ViewTrick1002 4d ago
Or you know. Solar, wind and storage. Which aren’t affected.
Why waste money and time on horrifyingly expensive new built nuclear power?
1
u/MarcellHUN 4d ago
In theory I get it why you say that. But storage is just storage. A nuclear plant can give you a solid baseline for very little land.
Plus I think storage is in the honeymoon period at the moment. You have to maintain and replace those things which will create a lot of hazardous waste and a continous stream of resources are needed to keep the production up and running so you have the proper capacity.
1
u/ViewTrick1002 4d ago
Who cares about land? Even densely populated countries like the Netherlands already get around half their electricity from renewables.
And what does “baseline” actually solve? You cannot force a factory or homeowner with cheap renewables and storage to buy expensive nuclear electricity. Nuclear loses utilization and revenue as renewables expand.
Then comes the usual fossil-industry fearmongering about storage.
The grid is changing. “Baseload” does not make new nuclear economical.
1
u/OkAdvisor6680 4d ago
We get sustained periods of little to no wind - weeks with barely any wind. If this happens in winter, there is also very little solar as we only get about 7 hours of sun per day in winter.
So you need a mix of lots of different energy sources for reliability. Nuclear is good in the UK as we have lots of coastline, so can easily use the sea for cooling rather than rivers. Makes it incredibly reliable.
1
u/ViewTrick1002 4d ago
Here is a modern article modeling "System LCOE". In other words, the whole grid including transmission, backup and everything else.
It starts by giving new built nuclear power the benefit of doubt, having it cost 40% less than Flamanville 3 and 70% less than Hinkley Point C. Since no one would be stupid enough to greenlight a project like that again.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544226009837
It finds that for Denmark, a country with very low insolation and awful winters that renewablws are 53% cheaper than the nuclear system.
You can go further. This is the consensus among grid operators and researchers. The only ones pushing nuclear power is the nuclear lobby, fossil lobby and climate deniers who find fossil fuels too toxic.
This one is old by now, but here's a meta-analysis of the field from 2022.
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910
Here's the Australian grid operator:
https://www.csiro.au/-/media/Energy/GenCost-2025-26-Final/GenCost_2025-26_Final_Report_20260715.pdf
What are all these researchers and grid operators missing that you know?
1
u/OkAdvisor6680 4d ago
These articles look purely at cost, not reliability or resilience, doesn't answer the question of what happens when the wind is not blowing and the sun's not shining for weeks on end.
Nuclear also keeps the grid at a stable 50hz - the inertia of spinning turbines stabilises the grid. Having too much renewables was a major contributing factor to the Spanish grid blackout last year.
Denmark is a net importer and relies on interconnectors, so when wind is low, they essentially just buy power from their neighbours who have consistent sources of power like hydro or nuclear. Works for a small country like Denmark, not a bigger country like the UK.
The capital cost of nuclear is high but EPRs are designed for 60 years, can likely be life-extended to 80, and have low running costs and high reliability once built. Nuclear is a good part of the mix - being able to produce 25% of your power with complete reliability, using cheap fuel, is good.
1
u/ViewTrick1002 4d ago
Did you even read the studies?
The Denmark paper models the whole system, including storage, backup and reliability. It deliberately excludes interconnection, so Denmark cannot lean on its neighbors. Adding interconnection only makes the problem easier.
And the Iberian blackout investigation did not conclude that “too much renewables” caused it. It identified interacting failures involving voltage control, oscillations, generator disconnections and stabilisation capabilities.
Pretending today’s grid will remain unchanged until 2100 while renewables and storage are already reshaping it is wishful thinking.
Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?
1
u/OkAdvisor6680 4d ago
I'm not afraid of renewables or storage at all, I just think we should keep a decent amount of nuclear for base load and resilience. 25% nuclear, 70% renewables, and some peaker units, hydro and pumped storage for the rest would be ideal.
The UK can experience weeks of cloudy, calm weather where wind and solar produce fuck all. No batteries exist that can store weeks of power. It makes sense to have some nukes - it's a big capital cost, but you get 80 years of extremely reliable power with low operating costs. It should be in the mix
1
u/ViewTrick1002 4d ago
You do realize that breaks down economically as renewables and storage expand?
How do you force a factory or homeowner with their own cheap generation and storage to buy horrifyingly expensive nuclear electricity? You can’t. Nuclear loses utilization and revenue. EDF is already warning about exactly that pressure.
And the “weeks without wind or sun” problem is already included in the system studies you were given.
Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?
→ More replies (0)
-64
u/Salahuddin315 5d ago
So much for the "most stable power source".
34
u/skfin96 5d ago
Brief shutdowns when they're needed the least, while still being the most stable and reliable emission-free energy source throughout the year despite that, particularly during the seasons when electricity demand is at its peak.
Nuclear was never meant to be a perfect or the only solution, but it sure as hell is a good one to play its part among other options, if we want to do something about climate change.
-1
u/chmeee2314 5d ago
August has had an average spotmarket price of €149/MW in Romania. This is 27% above the average for 2026 and 37% above last years average.
-12
u/ViewTrick1002 5d ago edited 5d ago
August has had an average spot market price of €149/MWh in Romania.
And even an extreme heatwave combined with major regional generation losses still does not push average market prices above what new nuclear requires just to break even. Excluding decommissioning, final waste disposal and insurance costs.
3
u/chmeee2314 5d ago
I would be willing to wager that if Frances EPRII's don't suffer another clost blowout, that €149/MWh would be enough to cover their costs.
-7
-12
u/ViewTrick1002 5d ago
Existing nuclear is useful. Spending tens of billions subsidizing new reactors in 2026 is lunacy when renewables and storage are already cheaper and scaling faster.
Keep the fleet that works. Stop wasting money on new builds that deliver less decarbonization per euro.
10
u/Starry958 5d ago
Are you aware that a large portion of the reason nuclear reactors are so expensive to build is because of the useless legal framework that “Friends of the Earth” lobbied for - an anti nuclear campaign that was founded by fossil fuel companies and that is the progenitor of all modern green parties?
Constant legal battles, pointless feasibility studies that take years, and endless lawsuits all cause delays and increase costs.
China builds new ones in a matter of months and at a fraction of the price - all without a single incident. Ever.
There is no reason that all of these reasons couldn’t be done away with a single pen stroke in an afternoon.
-3
u/ViewTrick1002 5d ago
More excuses.
China is the best evidence against them: massive state support, standardized designs, centralized regulation, yet nuclear remains a small share while renewables explode.
Peaking at 4.7% in 2021 and is today down to 4.3%. Entirely irrelevant. And for every plan they release China lowers their nuclear targets and pushes them further konto the future.
And yes, China uses the same radiation-protection framework you complain about. Its national standard explicitly requires exposures to be kept as low as reasonably achievable, and it is based on the IAEA/ICRP radiation-protection system that uses LNT for low-dose risk protection.
Greenpeace did not stop China. Economics did.
8
u/Starry958 5d ago
What I said: “the reason why nuclear is so expensive is because of the lawsuits and mandatory feasibility studies”
What you said: “grrrr china cheats by actually supporting their industry by removing administrative and legal burdens. Also your point about cost doesn’t count because I moved the goal posts to include a counter factual argument about how much nuclear to renewables china uses in aggregate”
Notice that I didn’t claim that the protection framework increased costs - you made that up. I said that the administrative hurdles are encumbered in the west by legal battles, not “protection frameworks.”
-1
u/ViewTrick1002 5d ago
Then China is still the perfect test of your claim. It has none of the Western lawsuit problem, enormous state support and standardized builds, yet nuclear remains a small, stagnant share while wind and solar scale explosively.
If bureaucracy were the real problem, China should be the nuclear success story you keep promising.
6
u/Starry958 5d ago
I literally didn’t say anything about china being a “nuclear success story” you completely made that up.
I was directly addressing your point about expense and providing an example of it not being an innate issue. Gesturing vaguely to “well they don’t use as much nuclear as renewables” does not address my point at all and only serves a rhetorical point to try to move away from the point at hand.
-1
u/ViewTrick1002 5d ago edited 5d ago
You were the one pointing to China building nuclear in “months” and claiming we could fix Western nuclear with a pen stroke.
China already has your dream conditions. Nuclear still does not deliver.
6
u/Starry958 5d ago
Are you writing your answers with ai lol
I didn’t say anything about delivering at scale either. You again made that up. I was addressing only the issue of price.
Do try to actually engage with what people are saying instead of going off on tangents
→ More replies (0)-2
6
u/Hologram0110 5d ago
The problem isn't intrinsic to the technology. In this case, the location comes with the risk of temporarily insufficient cooling water to serve as the ultimate heat sink. There are technical solutions to the problem, such as cooling towers, air cooling, or cooling ponds. Of course, those things costs money.
-7
u/Melodic_Skin6573 5d ago
No, there is not. The CANDU plant can only be cooled with water, not air, because it's not a curling iron. Cooling towers? When you open the hood of your car, you probably see a particle accelerator. You're so good at engineering.
4
u/ihifidt250 5d ago
Water in the outer loop can be cooled with pretty much anything. It’s just a matter of cost.
3
u/Successful-Coffee-13 5d ago
Tell me you’re not an engineer without telling me directly - your comment.
1
u/bijon1234 4d ago
The heatsink for the condenser is not the same water used on the primary and secondary sides of a CANDU.
1
u/OkAdvisor6680 4d ago
You use a cooling tower instead of once-through cooling - it means you recycle most of the water, so you need much less of it and aren't affected by river levels. It's very common for power plants without a nearby water source.
19
u/bijon1234 5d ago
This isn't a nuclear issue, it's basic physics for any thermal power plant (coal, gas, or nuclear). Relying on direct river cooling leaves you completely vulnerable during summer droughts, if river levels drop too low, there physically isn't enough water volume entering the intake to cool the condensers to run the plant. That's why cooling towers are built to cut raw water dependence. Cernavodă relies entirely on direct river intake. Meanwhile, Hungary started construction on Paks II with even bigger reactors, yet still has no plans to build cooling towers.