Paks nuclear power plant is almost fully turned off, but economic impact is likely to be limited

HUNGARY - In Brief 04 Aug 2026 by Istvan Racz

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As we reported a few days ago, Central Europe, and indeed the western part of the continent as well, is suffering from a severe drought, combined with unusually high peak daily air temperatures. Over the last few days, water levels in the Danube river have fallen to about half a meter lower than the previously recorded historic low, and that forced MVM, Hungary's publicly owned electricity service provider to reduce production to one-tenth of its normal level at the country's only nuclear power plant, which usually covers one-third of domestic needs for electricity. The cooling of this power plant relies entirely on the Danube, and so the low level of water and also its high temperature are both crucial problems.The problem is highly structured within the day, as during daytime, the country still has a surplus of electricity, due to the abundance of its solar panel capacities (one-fifth of total electricity consumption as an annual average). But in the evening hours, when the sun is setting and consumption peaks, a massive electricity deficit appears regularly.The problem could be highly consequential on the economy, but Hungary is part of the EU's unified electricity grid, and so it can import lots of electricity, provided there is enough supply elsewhere in the system. This is actually the current situation: Hungary imports lots of electricity at daily peak times: last night, domestic needs peaked around 6500MW, of which only 3000MW was satisfied by domestic production (some 2000MW missing due to the fallout of nuclear energy), and the rest was imports, mainly from Slovakia and Austria. Slovakia, e.g. has nuclear power plants using cooling towers, which are not affec...