The Hungarian government has decided to build a "peninsula" in the Danube river near the Paks nuclear power plant in the hope of raising critically low river levels, prime minister Peter Magyar said on Wednesday.
The 24-hour operation will involve adding 150,000m³ of stone to the two riverbanks near the 2GW Paks nuclear plant. In a possible second phase, authorities would sink two barges to redirect flows.
With no significant rainfall forecast in the Danube basin for weeks, the tenuous situation could "persist for months" in the absence of intervention, Magyar said.
The proposed intervention could ensure water levels at Paks' cooling channel do not drop below minus 90cm, allowing Paks to operate at full capacity, the prime minister argued.
Danube river levels at Paks were 108cm below the reference level, but are set to fall to 137cm by 18 August, near the record low of 140cm below the reference level on 4 August, when Paks avoided a complete shutdown by millimetres.
Romania carried out a similar operation using barges to redirect flows on 7-8 August at a section of the Danube near its 1.4GW Cernavoda nuclear plant.
Following the intervention, Danube river levels near Cernavoda were 8cm higher than initially forecast by 9 August. But two days later, operator Nuclearelectrica announced it would be likely to have to shut down the plant's second 700MW unit.
A complete failure of Paks would cost the Hungarian state 50bn forint/month (€136mn/month), as well as weighing on the economy, Magyar said.
