Cernavodă reactor could restart around 15 November as Danube flow rises

A restart date tied to the Danube

Romania's Minister of Energy, Dumitru Chisăliță, told Digi24 that one of the two reactors at the Cernavodă nuclear plant could be restarted around 15 November, provided current river forecasts hold. He called two weeks a realistic timeframe, but warned that any change to the forecasts could move the restart earlier or push it back by 7 to 10 days or more. The Danube's flow has risen significantly over the past two weeks, yet that increase has not yet made a restart possible. He said he would like the reactor to run from today, but that this is not possible, and he stressed that the timing depends on climate factors.

He put the target in concrete terms:

“Around 15 November, if the current trends and forecasts hold, we should have one reactor starting up.”

The plant has been offline since the summer, when low river levels threatened the cooling systems that depend on Danube water. Before the shutdown it supplied about 20% of the electricity produced for Romania's national energy system, and the country has been covering the shortfall with large electricity imports, especially at peak consumption hours.

Shutdown and the water crisis

Unit 1 was shut down in a controlled manner on 28 July 2026, and Unit 2 followed on 13 August 2026. The crisis reached a critical point on 10 October, when the water level at Cernavodă had dropped to minus 259 centimetres, just 3 centimetres above the operational limit of minus 262 centimetres, below which supply pumps cannot run normally. At that point the flow entering the country had fallen below 1,200 cubic metres per second. The National Administration Apele Române responded urgently by adding water through controlled releases from the Iezer reservoir.

Cooling fixes stall

Chisăliță said measures analysed since summer to add water at the cooling intakes had not produced the expected results. A commission has been working since July, and he said he had asked for it to be extended, with the ministries of transport, environment and waters involved. He described a plan known for more than 10 years that had dragged on and then been abandoned, and said part of the Danube's water would need to be diverted toward the Bala branch to reach the intakes.

He said the work carried out had no effect, calling that a certainty, and he pointed to the first such episode in 2003:

“Since 2003, when the first such situation occurred, 23 years have passed and nothing has happened.”

He also described the current state of affairs in these words:

“Things have somewhat frozen, even though the commission had set out steps that should have been carried further.”

What comes next

The minister said he would travel to Cernavodă this week to see the site first-hand. His full interview is scheduled for Saturday, 31 October, at 14:00 on Digi24's programme În fața ta. Separately, researcher Mihai Adamescu, interviewed by HotNews, said the Danube crisis that began in July could last until early 2027 or longer, and that episodes of extremely low flow will become more frequent. He also discussed how such episodes could affect nature, transport and the economy.