In August 2026 the variable that weighed most heavily on industrial costs in Central and Eastern Europe did not come from the markets, but from the level of a river. The drought that reduced the flow of the Danube hit the power stations that draw their cooling water from it, leaving two countries in the network facing the same problem with opposite outcomes.
In Romania the Cernavodă nuclear plant shut down a first reactor at the end of July; on 11 August the continuing fall in the river level made the closure of a second reactor likely within forty-eight hours, because the available water no longer guaranteed the safe operation of the cooling pumps.
In Hungary the response was infrastructural. After a record drop that had forced the partial shutdown of the plant, a submerged dam was built in the river — thousands of tonnes of stone poured into the riverbed — to raise the water level in front of the intakes. The works went faster than expected and by 24 August three of the four reactors at Paks were running again. This is no technical detail: Paks supplies almost half of Hungary's electricity demand, and during the critical weeks the country imported electricity from its neighbours at high prices. «The risk of an energy crisis no longer exists», said Prime Minister Péter Magyar.
The mechanism deserves attention. Cernavodă and Paks are hundreds of kilometres apart and belong to two separate national power systems, yet they draw their cooling water from the same river: a single climate variable was enough to put two electricity grids under pressure at the same time. It is a correlation that neither grid can see by looking only at its own system.
The overall picture remains one of caution. On 7 August gas stocks stood at 76.55% in Italy against a European average of 58%; the following day a drone coming from Romania exploded near a Bulgarian gas pipeline, a reminder that climate vulnerability now compounds the geopolitical kind.
For Italian companies active in the area, the message of this summer is that energy security is not played out on supply contracts alone, but on physical infrastructure and its capacity to withstand conditions that until a few years ago were considered exceptional. Those who manufacture in the region would do well to place water risk alongside price risk in their industrial planning.
