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Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant
- pjmlp 3mo agoSo nuclear isn't the solution after all.
- bratbag 3mo agoNuclear without greed is fine. Its only where shortcuts have been taken with cooling that there will be issues.
- peterashford 3mo agoSo, everywhere, in a Capitalistic society
- acdha 3mo agoThat seems like a huge disadvantage for nuclear power if you need to guarantee strict ideological commitment to ignore cost-competitiveness not just now but into the future. Renewables and batteries are not only cheaper now but have far less scope for major failures based on some MBA cutting corners in a decade.
- AngryData 3mo agoYou think big battery plants can't have issues with cost cutting?
- pjmlp 3mo agoSo basically no.
- inigyou 3mo agoWhat do you consider adequate cooling? Remember that for every GW of electricity you need to remove 2-3 GW of heat. That's a lot of heat. Strapping a giant PC radiator fan to the plant won't cut it.
- lm28469 3mo ago[dead]
- vrganj 3mo agoThis is happening all across Europe right now - Romania, France too. https://www.euronews.com/business/2026/07/13/france-shuts-down-nuclear-reactors-as-heatwave-intensifies https://www.euronews.com/business/2026/07/13/france-shuts-do... https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungarys-paks-nuclear-plant-could-shut-down-thursday-or-friday-pm-says-2026-07-30/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungarys-paks-nuclea... We keep having folks here argue that nuclear, not renewables are the path to take to get rid of fossil fuels. I have strong doubts - it feels like that doesn't account for the sad realities of climate change.
- cinntaile 3mo agoPeople arguing for one alternative over the other are usually politically motivated. I feel like you are doing the same. Sometimes nuclear is a good fit, sometimes renewables is a good fit, sometimes fossil fuels are a good fit. Most of the time a mix is the best fit. It depends on what you are optimizing for and what is geographically, (geo)politically and economically possible. All these systems are then built using assumptions, sometimes those assumptions no longer make sense after a certain period of time and sometimes you just temporarily or permanently have to adapt to the changes in the environment. This is an unusual but expected scenario for the nuclear plants along the Danube.
- vrganj 3mo agoI'm not really opposed to nuclear power politically. I just think it's a non-starter given the much higher cost, complexity of buildout and lack of reliability.
- deepsummer 3mo agoIn countries with dark winters and without enough hydro power, the only reliable alternative are fossil fuels...
- oblio 3mo agoWind + storage, geothermal.
- Ethan312 3mo agoA nuclear plant being forced offline by low river levels is a striking reminder that even low-carbon energy depends on climate-resilient infrastructure. How many plants across Europe face the same cooling-water risk?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- comrade1234 3mo agoHere in Switzerland during some heatwaves they have to shut down nuclear plants too because the river water is too warm and adding warm water to it would kill the fish.
- number6 3mo agoAnd it's not cold enough to cool the reactor
- masklinn 3mo agoThe reactor absolutely is not going to care, it’s the tertiary cooling circuit cooling for the steam turbines, it will have cooked off everything downstream long before it’s an issue. This is entirely an ecological and safety concern.
- seszett 3mo agoNo that's never the problem, even 40°C intake is cool enough to cool a reactor, it's all just a question of returned water temperature that can be harmful to a river if too high (generally the limit in Europe is set to 30°C).
- masklinn 3mo agoIt can vary by the river too (e.g. I remember Switzerland pulling back a reactor around 25 intake), and iirc there’s an absolute limit on the outflow (you don’t want to boil alive the stuff just off of the plant) and a relative one a bit downstream (you can’t heat the river to 20 when it’s freezing). These heatwaves reduce the margin from both directions, a hotter intake means you have less margin on the outflow, and the lower flow rate means there’s less water to dilute that outflow. And apparently for that specific plant there’s also the water level not even reaching the intake.
- Retric 3mo agoAs long as it’s designed for those temperatures everything is fine, but efficiency still suffers.
- pepperoni_pizza 3mo agoYou can totally retrofit existing nuclear power plants for closed loop cooling. I'm not sure what the cost would be, though, but it might be worth doing.
- moffkalast 3mo agoIs it economically viable to run though? Natural draft towers or direct body of water cooling is used almost universally since it doesn't take any extra power. A large chunk of the powerplant's output would be running heat pump compressors to stop itself from exploding.
- emsign 3mo agoFirst of all you can't retrofit every npp with that, it's a lie. And eve; if you could, you are correct, it's financially not viable. Renewable energy is always the cheaper option by far.
- wongarsu 3mo agoFully closed loop is probably not viable. But I suspect that's not the extreme GP might have meant. If for the sake or discussion we simplify cooling to four options: 1: just passing river water through a heat exchanger for cooling 2: ingesting river water, using it for cooling, then passing it through a cooling tower before returning it to the river 3: pass the water output from the cooling tower directly back in the cooling loop, only ingest enough water to replace evaporation 4: fully closed loop via direct heat exchange with air Then 4 is not very viable. But a lot of nuclear plants are stuck at 1 or 2, and each step up the ladder would allow them to operate in worse conditions. This one seems to be at version one
- noduerme 3mo agoHow do these things, whose sole purpose is to turn heat into electricity, end up with so much extra heat that it takes more energy than they produce to disperse it? Can't the excess heat in a closed loop system be captured and used to power the cooling? Sorry, maybe this is a stupid question.
- emsign 3mo agoThis is what nuclear power enthusists like to ignore when they talk about nuclear power being a solution to energy and climate change.
- Cthulhu_ 3mo agoIs that a fact or are you just trying to spark a debate?
- inigyou 3mo agoSeems like a fact to me?
- fylo 3mo agoEvery power source has trade offs, bud. They call solar renewable, but in fact panels have a shelf life, and take valuable finite resources and energy to manufacture. This is what climate change activists like to ignore /s
- inigyou 3mo agoGlad you added the /s because solar panels only wear out over hundreds of years.
- mertbio 3mo agoThey also constantly criticise Germany and its nuclear power plant closures, linking almost every negative news story about the country to this issue. It seems they’re completely unaware of the potential consequences of operating a nuclear power plant.
- sajithdilshan 3mo agoA lot of energy crisis in Germany is due to the closure of their power plants. Just like any other infrastructure, nuclear power plants needs to be modernised over the time and Hungary didn’t do that. It’s not the fault of nuclear technology, but lack of management in Hungary’s case
- raverbashing 3mo agoIf only there was a power source that would excel during sunny and warm days, huh Then we could stop the nuclear plants when needed for cooling and maintenance
- seszett 3mo ago> we could stop the nuclear plants when needed for cooling Well that's exactly what they did thanks to solar power provided by the rest of the grid, so your snark seems rather unwarranted.
- chpatrick 3mo agoHungary actually has a ton of solar, video from today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqpTN5PZLow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqpTN5PZLow The problem is we don't have enough storage to use it after dark.
- Luc 3mo agoOf course a 1960's design isn't adapted to current weather conditions. That doesn't mean the whole technology is useless, like so many commenters imply. Any new build can and will include cooling adapted to hotter conditions.
- cucumber3732842 3mo ago[flagged]
- roenxi 3mo agoYou're probably going to struggle to come up with a motive for that behaviour. It is much more likely that they simply aren't very thoughtful. Complex webs of deception in a public argument are certainly possible, but it generally relies on some group having a clear financial incentive to misdirect. That doesn't exist in the nuclear debate.
- cucumber3732842 3mo ago>You're probably going to struggle to come up with a motive for that behaviour. No, I'm not. Not in the slightest. Number in top right go up. Monkey brain feel goooooood when that happen. Monkey brain keep doing behavior that make that happen. > It is much more likely that they simply aren't very thoughtful. They're plenty thoughtful. They'll contrive all sorts of arcane logic, plausibly deniable lies and witty turns of phrase (some of which are quite impressive). What they're not is self aware (the dishonesty is a byproduct of that). > Complex webs of deception Those are possible but I don't think that's what's happening here. > but it generally relies on some group having a clear financial incentive to misdirect. Internet fanboys work for free. They have no financial incentive. Therefore we fall back to the monkey brain incentive.
- one33seven 3mo ago> a clear financial incentive to misdirect. That doesn't exist in the nuclear debate. It's very obviously not in the interests of "big fossile" to go either solar or nuclear.
- josefritzishere 3mo agoDesertification is next.
- measurablefunc 3mo agoIt's now.
- ck2 3mo agoThorium Reactors are the future, much more controllable and "fails safe-r" they also can "burn" nuclear waste (spent fuel from water reactors) * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElulEJruhRQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElulEJruhRQ
- VLM 3mo agoI find it interesting the discussion here is entirely about water temperature whereas the shutdown is entirely about NPSH. True there is a small different in NPSH pump limit of hot summer water vs cold winter water, but not as much as you'd think. Its not that the intake pipes are hanging out in the breeze above water; most pumps are designed not to cavitate at a certain input pressure (often pretty low) and I was bored enough to look it up and when the river is 134 cm below reference at this site, the pumps will be very unhappy long term if you keep sucking water in. They'll keep running, at a reduced rate, but cavitation will cause serious issues. At some sites, perhaps not this site, filtration systems (grates and stuff) on the input are designed for a certain ideal pressure and ideal flow rate, so that can also be a problem. Thermal limits are also very arbitrary and designed to a financial limit. Most plants worldwide are limited to a delta V, I suppose there could exist an environmental law that limits to an arbitrary fixed temp. Normally if 10 gallons/sec heats up 10 degrees, then 100 gallons/sec would only heat 1 degree. But it would cost 10x as much and only be needed a couple days/year in the driest summers, so a tradeoff point, well chosen or not, was selected. Most absolute limits are utterly ridiculous like 90F. The only long term way to maintain a river at or above 90F is an air dew point of 90F and most people will be dead by then. I find it improbable the water temp is too high, everyone without air conditioning would already be dead if the dew point were substantially over 90F. You could probably "cook" a small lake or dam area with a nuclear plant into something like a giant hot tub, but not a free flowing river. Looking at the mass media coverage, its mostly pictures and discussion of low water levels (the true cause) followed by journalist and consumer discussion about water temps, there is no meeting of the minds between the engineers and the general public and AI and journalists. If for whatever weird reason, river levels were low in the winter, low NPSH at the pumps would shut it down just as effectively at a water temperature of 1 C. Large industrial water pumps react extremely poorly to low input pressure.
- Maledictus 3mo agoNPSH = Net Positive Suction Head
- _tk_ 3mo agoRelated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49107044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49107044
- Triesault 3mo agoI wonder if any new hunger stones have been found since the Danube's wafer level reached this new record low. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_stone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_stone
- yls 3mo agoThey found mamooth bones! Edit: add source [ger] https://science.orf.at/stories/3236752/ https://science.orf.at/stories/3236752/
- lostlogin 3mo ago> 4,700 cubic metres per second in July, whereas on Wednesday it was down to less than a third of that, at 1,600cm per second. Did a double take at measuring water flow in cm per second. At least it isn’t in busses or Eiffel or something.
- blitzar 3mo agoSeems reasonable to me, same metrics used in Pooh Sticks.
- blitzar 3mo agoWhere have all the "what do you do when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine" commenters gone?
- pojzon 3mo agoWhere are the comments about „molten-salt reactors dont need any of that”. And a closed water loop. China builds them on a desert and we cannot build them anywere in Europe due to plain stupidity.
- Kon5ole 3mo ago>we cannot build them anywere in Europe due to plain stupidity. Economics I think. Nuclear power has gone bankrupt in France already (arguably more than once) and gotten bailed out. Now they produce electricity at a price that's often above market price, with losses covered by the taxpayers. This despite relying on cheap cooling from rivers. Adding more expensive cooling won't help. We've quite recently reached mass production economies of scale for both solar panels and batteries. The implications are that the price of electricity is set to drop even more in the years to come.
- TitaRusell 3mo agoSolar panels keep getting better and cheaper every year. Can't say the same for nuclear.
- inigyou 3mo agoI believe this is why the USA recently declared that it's no longer going to follow the "linear no-threshold model" and "as low as reasonable achievable" principle of radiation exposure. In other words they're declaring that a small amount of radiation is good for you. Building a reactor without shielding and with a single open-cycle water loop should reduce costs, right? (Do you know what else reduces costs? Apparently, putting a foot of graphite at the bottom of your control rods and not paying close attention to a dangerously unstable reactor during an unusual experiment. These aren't official American policy yet.) Also, the USA's recent ban on solar electricity equipment should help make other forms more competitive.
- Nux 3mo ago"The Danube runs 2,857km (1,775 miles) through 19 countries." BBC can't even check Wikipedia.
- chermi 3mo agoI ask once again: why is everyone so convinced that nuclear is the one technology that somehow doesn't get cheaper and better with advancing tech and scale? And don't tell me learning curves are proven to not apply. The preconditions for learning curves are arguably only now being met in China.
- inigyou 3mo agoGo and invent an awesome nuclear plant then.
- cineticdaffodil 3mo agoWe need a aponge country for these summers, something that can hold onto water.