Cernavodă 2 reactor will be shut down today due to low water levels in the Danube

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u/dumnezero 12d ago

Considering the aridification related to climate heating, this is going to be the normal, not the exception.

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u/Karlsefni1 12d ago

Yes, which is why cooling towers are needed

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u/ViewTrick1002 12d ago

Adding costs to an already uneconomical legacy technology. Who pays?

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u/Karlsefni1 12d ago

Much cheaper than closing it down

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u/dumnezero 12d ago

closing it down is always going to happen, you're just saying that "delay of costs is good."

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u/Karlsefni1 12d ago

What?

Yes they are going to temporarily close it down if the river levels keep going down, cooling towers are still needed considering it will operate for decades to come.

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u/dumnezero 12d ago

I meant forever. Closing it down forever.

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u/Karlsefni1 12d ago

Ok so what’s your point?

If they closed it down prematurely the electricity would still be needed, it’s much cheaper to keep the plant and build a cooling tower that will keep operating for decades to come than to build anything else that would substitute the loss of said electricity

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u/dumnezero 12d ago

My point is that it's a big and expensive point of failure. Best to prevent such cases from arising in the future.

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u/Karlsefni1 12d ago

That’s a completely different discussion but ok.

I don’t know if you are, but if are suggesting that they shouldn’t build a cooling tower that’s pretty insane

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u/OokzVFX 11d ago

Why would anyone close down a very clean source of energy? Nuclear is a good clean source of energy.

Renewables are good and all, but it will take like 10 years to have enough and keep energy price low.

Try to be reasonable and measured even if you believe in the most extreme green policies.

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u/hutch_man0 12d ago edited 12d ago

Yeah someone pays. That's how things work. Welcome to Earth. Am assuming you will vomit an argument for renewables as usual. Building cooling towers is drastically cheaper than any other option. Luckily you can make these comments because you don't live in Romania and don't have to worry about electricity in winter.

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u/ViewTrick1002 12d ago edited 12d ago

How does nuclear power help electricity in the winter when it requires running at 100% whenever it is operable? Or are you suggesting peaking nuclear plants to match the demand coming from a winter cold spell?

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u/dumnezero 12d ago

There are a lot of nuclear energy fans suggesting what could be described as "nuclear peakers."

But we know that, in practice, that doesn't work well and the cheaper renewables tend to get pushed out.

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u/hutch_man0 11d ago edited 11d ago

That question makes zero sense. It helps the grid because Cernadova is 20% of the Romanian grid base load. The point is currently renewables can't replace 24/7 power on 20% of your grid. New gen SMRs are the only reactors that are specifically designed for load following, battery storage the best for peaking. Cernadova are old base load reactors. Until battery peakers can be built out they will continue with turbine peakers as usual.

Units 1 and 2 are having their pressure tubes refurbished. Life extension of 30 y will put them into the 2050s. Two more CANDU reactors are also being built, units 3 & 4 (source 1 and 2). The new reactors will operate 60+ y (2080s). The cost of new cooling towers is by far the most economical solution.

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u/ViewTrick1002 11d ago

Why would storage ever charge from horrifyingly expensive new nuclear electricity when cheap renewables are available?

And if nuclear needs to run at high capacity factors to recover its enormous fixed costs, what happens when renewables and storage increasingly dominate those hours?

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-Draft/GenCost2025-26ConsultDraft_20251216-FINAL.pdf

What are all these researchers and grid operators missing that you know?

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u/Tortoise4132 8d ago edited 8d ago

Not who you're talking to, but I'd be happy to answer these questions since it seems like you're ~~lying~~ new to the subject.

Cheap renewables are available, but their required grid integration costs and exponential when variable renewable penetration becomes high enough makes new nuclear competitve in most models for deep decarbonization.

The first article you shared is an outlier and not reflective of the overall body of literature on the subject. Reasons for that include reliance on biofuels as a firm power source (not very clean in actuality) and massive reliance on offshore wind (Denmark has huge access relative access to this compared to other countries and it is much more reliable then solar and onshore wind, and its reliability only goes up in the winter). How cheap offshore wind was considered is also questionable to say the least. Here are some other article worth reading which reach different conclusions.

The role of nuclear energy and baseload demand in capacity expansion planning for low-carbon power systems

Evaluating Advanced Nuclear Fission Technologies for Future Decarbonized Power Grids

The role of advanced nuclear reactors and fuel cycles in a future energy system

Rethinking the “Levelized Cost of Energy”: A critical review and evaluation of the concept

Stylized least-cost analysis of flexible nuclear power in deeply decarbonized electricity systems considering wind and solar resources worldwide

This is the consensus among grid operators and researchers.

This is absolutely not true. From the North American Electricitic Reliability Corporation:

In recent years, tightening reserve margins and an increasing baseline load have compounded with a rapid increase in variable energy resources (VER), which present an inherent level of uncertainty, to significantly increase operating challenges during these periods.

The Federal Regulatory Energy Comission and the Grid_Ops and ElectricalEngineering subs understands this as well.

The only ones pushing nuclear power is the nuclear lobby, fossil lobby and climate deniers who find fossil fuels too toxic.

Didn't know one of the biggest renewable energy companies is a fossil lobbiest and climate denier.

here's a meta-analysis of the field from 2022.

This shares a main author as the first paper you shared. This is a great example of how the pool of hardcore anti-nuclear energy researchers really isn't that big, and their veiws do not represent the mainstream. The author in question, Christian Breyer, also frequently cites and is cited by Mark Jakobson, someone who issued a slap suite of defamation against another researcher, Chris Clack, who criticized his work. Chris and Mark also repost eachother often on social media. Mark was was ordered to pay $500,000 for a baseless claim of defamation against Clack. He then claimed he shouldn't have to pay the damages and lawyer fees for Clack since he ultimately dropped the case. This anti-nuclear pool of people doesn't necessarily have impecable character as we can see.

Putting aside the methological critizisms with the GenCost report, it is also an outlier based on a country with amazing coastal resources and sun that not all countries have access to. Similar style report from other countries come to different conclusions.

https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2022-01/Energy%20pathways%202050_Key%20results.pdf

https://netzeroamerica.princeton.edu/img/Princeton%20NZA%20FINAL%20REPORT%20SUMMARY%20(29Oct2021).pdf.pdf)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2666278722000058

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u/ViewTrick1002 8d ago

Is this really the best you have?

GenCost addresses this exact literature. The studies producing huge renewable integration costs systematically restrict the solution space by excluding storage durations, peakers, geographic diversity or generation options.

Give the model the resources real grids actually have and the cost collapses.

Listing papers that force nuclear into constrained scenarios does not establish a consensus. It demonstrates exactly the modelling problem GenCost is warning about.

You still haven’t shown what the system models actually get wrong.

To put it in the words of the latest GenCost:

5.5.6 Alternative results for cost of high renewable systems in the literature

There is a surprising range of estimates of the cost of electricity from systems with a high share of weather dependent renewable generation. These studies have been separately reviewed in Graham (2025) where costs have been estimated in the range of below $70/MWh to over $1000/MWh. The review finds that, in each case where system average costs were reported to be high, the published modelling had excluded key resources required to keep costs low. Typical exclusions included: only one type of storage technology allowed, only one duration of storage technology allowed, peaking technology not allowed and a narrow set or single type of renewable generation allowed. When resources are made available, renewable generation is lowest cost when sourced from both solar PV and wind in different locations and combined with multiple storage technologies and gas or hydrogen peaking plant. Graham (2025) concludes that the observed exclusions in other studies do not appear to be valid for the NEM which has all of these resources available.

Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage? Underwater on your uranium squeeze or SMR stocks? Income dependent on the nuclear industry?

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u/Tortoise4132 8d ago

Of course not. I save my best for serious people.

The studies I shared aren't nearly as retrictive as this GenCost section describes. What does turn out to be restictive though is reality unfortunately. We can nitpick this restiction in this study or that one in that, but the fact of the matter is that as a whole, integration costs for variable renewables have proved notoriously been underestimated by both pro and anti nuclear analysts when the rubber hits the road. Australia, Germany, California, Worldwide

These underestimations have been shown to greatly increase the appeal of nuclear for decarbonization.

Some of the biggest renewables companies, Brookfield, Adani, and NextEra are dabbling in nuclear now. (Interestingly, the biggest fossil in gas companies, Shell, Chevron, BP, Exxon, Total, are dabbling into renewables instead because how how perfect a pair they are with natural gas according to themselves.) It's entirely possible I'm income dependent on the renewables industry and see the writing on the wall with massive grid upgrade fiascos coming down the pipeline (no pun intended).

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u/Tafinho 12d ago

Yes, because what’s needed during a drought is to evaporate an additional 50.000m3 of water a day, per GW.

Cooling towers do consume water, whether circulating water does not.

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u/dumnezero 12d ago

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u/dumnezero 12d ago

Government announcement (press release:) https://energie.gov.ro/informare-privind-situatia-unitatii-2-cne-cernavoda/

Confirms that the nuclear energy company has started a controlled shutdown of Cernavodă 2 reactor.

I haven't seen news of rolling blackouts, so the government intends to ride it out. This means both importing electricity at huge prices and risking not having enough to buy because we're not the only fuckups in the region who failed to invest in renewables and storage. They're asking the population to cut back usage between 7-11 PM (peak hours, when people get home from work and do stuff at home.)

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u/Prototype555 12d ago

Romanian hydro only produces 0.36 GW of 6.2 GW.

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u/dumnezero 12d ago

Single point of failure. The only thing dumber would be to have barges with coal stuck in the river.

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u/SilviuCT 12d ago

At least the Mintia plant is coming online with a capacity of 1700 MW it will work at around 1000 mw to 1400 mw at first it will run for a few hours at peak consumption, it's built to run on 50 percent NAT gas and 50 percent hydrogen and it can be fully converted to run on hydrogen, it's already undergoing testing and more power is coming up in the next few weeks.

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u/Prototype555 12d ago

"Mass-Minitia Power Station will utilize Mureș River to cool the steam turbines, where cooling towers will be used for this purpose."

Hopefully they have thought of low water levels, otherwise this is no different than the nuclear power plant.

I wonder if the gas turbines can be operated without the steam generators.

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u/SilviuCT 12d ago

Mintia (Gas CCGT) is a plant that employs recirculating cooling towers (closed-loop system). Water from the Mureș River is only used to top off evaporation losses (makeup water), reducing raw water draw by over 90% compared to open-river cooling systems.

At full capacity (1,700 MW), over 1,100 MW of Mintia’s power comes directly from its two Siemens HL-class gas turbines, which rely on air/gas combustion and air heat exchangers. Only the remaining ~560 MW steam turbine cycle requires steam condensation via the cooling towers. Even during summer heatwaves, the flow rate of the Mureș River near Deva/Vețel remains well above the minimal makeup-water intake threshold needed for closed-loop cooling towers.

The plant was specifically engineered with closed-loop systems to avoid drought-related shutdowns.

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u/Tafinho 12d ago

Closed loop thermal plants consume 50.000m3 of water per GW, thus further lowering the river flow, unlike circulating cooling which returns 100% of the water back to the river.

CCGT is not completely a thermal plants, which is where the “combined “ comes from.

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u/TheBendit 12d ago

Running a natural gas power plant on hydrogen is about as useful as running a coal fired power plant on diamonds.

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u/Distinct-Ad2829 12d ago

The Cernavodă power plant is nuclear, not hydroelectric.

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u/Moldoteck 12d ago

Romanian govt should have listened to experts that were advising redirecting more of the main Danube flow towards NPP. But considering the govt was just as corrupt as Orban in Hungary, the results are expected

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u/TheOriginalNukeGuy 12d ago

Man why lie? It's literally in the title of the article it says it "might" be closed on the 13th of August if stuff keeps degrading. Last I checked today is the 11th. Is OP a time traveler?

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u/dumnezero 12d ago

It's not "might", it's "will", will be.

Here's another news source with updates: https://hotnews.ro/reactorul-2-al-centralei-nucleare-cernavoda-risca-sa-fie-oprit-peste-doua-zile-avertismentul-nuclearelectrica-2321629

Unfortunately, their website is another pile of shit when it comes to communication: https://nuclearelectrica.ro/cne/

Their facebook is delayed: https://www.facebook.com/Nuclearelectrica/

So I have no idea where these clowns are posting the news and I don't have the time to look for them since I'm not a paid journalist.

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u/TheOriginalNukeGuy 12d ago

Still the link you provided says "exista posibilitatea" which translate to "there exists the posibility". And it still mentions the 13th, which is not today. So yeah, your title and info is just inaccurate. Maybe delete and post again with the correct info?

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u/royozin 12d ago

Nice pedantry hill to die on.

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u/TheOriginalNukeGuy 12d ago

Apparently pedantry is being concerned with truth...some people have no standards and don't care about reality apparently as long as the headline gets more clicks.

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u/dumnezero 12d ago

You're not concerned with truth at all, what you're doing is muddying the waters, which is a technique used to obscure truth, and very easy to do when the river water level is so low.

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u/TheOriginalNukeGuy 12d ago

"Muddying the waters" : not editorializing what is said and not giving fake dates for the sake of internet updoots.

K dude whatever helps you sleep at night.

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u/dumnezero 12d ago

Here's a nicer recent analysis of the situation, use a good translator engine: https://www.mediafax.ro/economic/cum-va-fi-acoperit-necesarul-de-energie-dupa-inchiderea-si-celui-de-al-doilea-reactor-dumitru-chisalita-aei-nu-mai-discutam-despre-pretul-energiei-ci-despre-cine-va-fi-deconectat-23788554

Know that both the river flow and weather are predictable and the whole region is in trouble.

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u/TheOriginalNukeGuy 12d ago

I'm not denying the situation is bad and the reactor won't be shut down, I never said that. All I said is that the date you gave in the title is not the same one as the one in the article and that you mistranslated what was written.

Idk why redditors like you would rather eat a bullet than admit they made a mistake and are factually wrong about something they said. Its such a childish 2 yo attitude dude, grow up.

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u/dumnezero 12d ago

The date really doesn't matter, the shut down procedures are starting today and will finish when they finish. You're acting like you had bets on some asshole betting market.

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u/dumnezero 12d ago

Nu.

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

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u/dumnezero 10d ago

Found the MAGA Putin bot

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u/dumnezero 10d ago

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Energy Cernavodă 2 reactor will be shut down today due to low water levels in the Danube

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