Drought grips half of Europe

The Po at Cremona is flowing at 193 m³/s, a third of its historical average (Il Giorno). That matters because the Po irrigates Italy's richest farmland, feeds hydropower turbines, and keeps seawater from creeping upstream into the delta. The Danube has dropped below the depth needed to cool Romania's only nuclear plant. The Rhine at Kaub, the narrow point that sets freight capacity for western Germany, has fallen past historic lows. The same drought is hitting all three systems at once, and the EU's Joint Research Centre reported on 12 August that it now covers 50% of EU and UK territory (JRC). Rivers do invisible industrial work across Europe: cooling power stations, carrying freight, irrigating farmland, generating hydropower. Drought makes all four fail together.

Power stations without enough river

The clearest damage is in electricity. Romania's Cernavodă plant, which normally supplies about a fifth of national power, shut down completely on 13 August after both reactor units lost adequate cooling water from the Danube (Le Monde, Al Jazeera). Nuclear reactors produce enormous heat; only part becomes electricity, and the rest must be removed by river water flowing through condensers. When the river gets too shallow for the intake pumps, the plant has to stop.

Hungary's Paks plant, which generates nearly half the country's electricity, shows the same problem from a different angle. Output fell from roughly 965 MW to 240 MW in early August as the Danube hit historic lows. The government responded by sinking rock-loaded barges and building a temporary sill on the riverbed to raise water a few centimetres near the cooling intake (ABC News, Telex). In France, rivers are still deep enough, but returning heated cooling water would breach temperature limits that protect aquatic life. By 12 August, 13 of 57 French reactors were affected, and environmental limits (compounded by jellyfish clogging cooling intakes at Gravelines) had taken a record 20.4% of French nuclear capacity offline (Boursorama/AFP, Euronews).

When a country loses cheap nuclear generation, it buys power from neighbours through Europe's coupled electricity market, where power flows across borders toward the highest accepted bids, and prices rise wherever traders have to call on dearer plants or imports. French day-ahead power jumped 34% in a single day, reaching €126/MWh on 10 August, according to France Épargne. Bulgaria's Kozloduy plant, still running on the Danube's Bulgarian stretch, faced unprecedented export demand of 3,500–4,000 MW from Romanian and Hungarian traders (Mediapool). That makes Bulgaria a regional buffer, but a brittle one: if Kozloduy were curtailed too, those exports would vanish.

Barges half-empty, fields going salt

On the Rhine, Germany's Federal Institute of Hydrology confirmed the river had reached or fallen below the lowest known water levels over long stretches (BfG). One vessel built for 1,200 tonnes passed Kaub carrying just 180 tonnes (Argus Media). Chemicals producer Covestro said raw-material traffic was already restricting production (Tagesschau). Road and rail can absorb some cargo, but the substitution math is punishing: a 25% drop in Rhine freight equals roughly 3 million tonnes per month, or about 120,000 extra truckloads that the road network cannot easily handle (WDR). The German government now treats low water as a recurring economic risk (Handelsblatt).

In Italy's Po basin, the pre-Alpine lakes that feed summer irrigation have nearly emptied: Maggiore at 5.3%, Como at 5.9%, Iseo at 5% (Il Sole 24 Ore). Seawater has pushed 20–25 km inland up the Po Delta, making irrigation water unusable for rice farmers already rationing supply (Pianura Reno). Italian hydropower fell 14.9% year on year in July (Affaritaliani), tightening the same power supply that drought is already squeezing across the continent.

Coping is not adapting

Every country found a workaround. Hungary built a sill. France stayed a net power exporter. Romania covered gaps with imports. But each fix depends on someone else's buffer holding. Emergency river engineering raises water at one intake; it does not create flow. Thermal exemptions let plants run hotter and transfer stress to ecosystems. Imports work only while a neighbour has spare capacity. Europe has learned to borrow that spare capacity during drought. The numbers here show where the limit is: adaptation has to happen before every neighbour needs the same slack at the same time.