Romania has deployed emergency engineering measures to preserve operation of the remaining Cernavodă reactor. These include dredging, removing underwater obstructions and positioning rock-loaded barges to redirect Danube water towards the cooling-water intake.
The intervention is intended to extend operation by approximately nine to ten days rather than only five or six. It buys time but does not change the underlying hydrological position. Danube flows have fallen to roughly one-third of the normal August level and may remain depressed beyond mid-August.
Loss of the second reactor would remove another 680 MW of dependable baseload, leaving all 1.36 GW of Cernavodă capacity unavailable. Romania would then depend more heavily on gas-fired generation, coal units, imports and demand restrictions during evening hours.
The government has already authorised staged reductions for industrial consumers and possible export restrictions if adequacy deteriorates. This adds a physical-delivery risk to cross-border trades. A participant holding commercial transmission capacity from Romania cannot assume that exports will remain available after emergency system-security measures are activated.
The risk extends into neighbouring markets. Moldova depends heavily on Romanian supply. Hungary is already structurally short and regularly imports more than 2 GW. Serbia can export during selected hours, but its own hydro position is weak and coal availability remains operationally sensitive.
Bulgaria is the strongest immediate alternative supplier because it retains Kozloduy nuclear generation, lignite capacity, hydropower and a year-to-date electricity surplus. Yet Bulgaria cannot simultaneously replace Romanian nuclear production, cover its own evening demand and support every neighbouring market at unconstrained volumes.
