Hungary plans to sink barges to ensure nuclear plant cooling

Hungarian authorities will sink two barges in the Danube on Saturday ​to raise the water level at the Paks nuclear ‌plant to avert a shutdown of one of its last two remaining turbines, as water levels are dropping, Prime Minister Peter Magyar ​said.

The plant currently operates at around 25% of its ​capacity due to a historic drought and record low ⁠water levels on the Danube river, from which the ​nuclear plant draws its coolant.

Magyar said in a Facebook post ​that current forecasts indicated the water level would drop to the critical level by early Monday morning at which point one of the two ​operating turbines would have to be shut down.
"The Danube ​is receding...The controlled sinking of the barges will begin shortly," he said.

Hungary's ‌government ⁠said on Wednesday that it would build a riverbed "sill", a submerged, dam-like structure built crosswise on the bottom of a river channel, to manage water flow. That will take weeks.

It ​also said that ​two 80-metre (260-foot) ⁠barges would be submerged near the nuclear plant to raise the water level in the short ​term so that the plant's two turbines ​could continue ⁠working while the riverbed sill was under construction.

Neighbouring Romania shut down its last working reactor on Thursday due to the ⁠low level ​of the Danube. The drought also ​raised questions in Hungary and Romania about how to adapt atomic energy to an ​increasingly extreme climate.

-Reuters