Low Danube Forces Hungary's Nuclear Plant to Close

The river has fallen after a summer with very little rain, followed by several heatwaves. Europe is warming about twice as fast as the rest of the world, according to the Copernicus climate service. A Serbian hydrologist, Dejan Vladikovic, told the television channel N1 that the Danube had not been this low for 50 to 60 years, and that it would probably not recover before the middle of September. Romania's National Institute of Hydrology measured the flow entering the country at 1,600 cubic metres per second on Wednesday, about a third of the normal July figure of 4,700.

Magyar warned that Hungary's electricity supply could become critical from Monday, when temperatures are expected to stay near 37C. He asked people to avoid using a lot of power between 17:00 and 22:00, including charging electric cars and running air conditioning. Shipping has stopped in Bulgaria, where police took 186 passengers off a cruise ship that ran aground near Vidin. The falling water has also uncovered the past: a German warship from the Second World War in Serbia, and the bones of a mammoth in Bulgaria.