Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Madyar announced that due to a sharp decrease in the water level in the Danube, the "Paksh" nuclear power plant may stop working completely, reports 24.hu.
The head of the government announced in an emergency video message that at night and in the morning new shutdowns of power units were implemented at the station. The capacity of the NPP has decreased from the usual 2000 megawatts to 480 megawatts. Due to the loss of production, the Hungarian power system operator MAVIR had to implement a protocol of actions in case of serious failures.
Earlier, Madyar said that the complete shutdown of the station could be on Monday, but the decrease in water level has accelerated and the shutdown could happen earlier.
In order to stabilize the power system, the authorities are planning to activate backup power plants. In addition, it is expected that one of the units of the Danubian Thermal Power Plant (with a capacity of 400 megawatts) will start working again after the repair from Sunday. Large industrial consumers have already voluntarily reduced electricity consumption by about 240 megawatts, but this may not be enough in case of further reduction in capacity of Paksh NPP.
The government has also changed the order of possible restrictions on energy consumption. First of all, large enterprises will be asked to reduce consumption. If this is not enough, the operator MAVIR will be able to introduce mandatory restrictions for the industry, up to the disconnection of individual companies from the network. Population restrictions can only be introduced in the latest version.
Among the additional measures, the authorities announced:
• suspension of freight rail traffic during peak hours from Monday, 17:00 to 22:00;
• transition to telework of civil servants during the first three days of the next week,
• recommendation to reduce the use of office buildings of private companies,
• turning off the decorative lighting of state institutions,
• establishing restrictions on non-essential water consumption, including irrigation of sports facilities and filling of swimming pools.
Madyar also announced that the government has ordered the third-highest level of water restrictions in the most affected areas.
The Prime Minister put the responsibility of the current situation on the previous government, stating that the authorities knew about the risks related to the drop in the water level near the "Paksh" NPP since 2018, but the necessary measures to modernize the cooling system were taken quite late.
