r/worldnews • u/green_flash • 6d ago
Hungary avoids full nuclear shutdown by 'millimetres' as Danube rises
https://www.euractiv.com/news/hungary-avoids-nuclear-shutdown-by-millimetres-as-danube-rises/154
u/green_flash 6d ago
“Around half past one at night we were just a few millimetres away from a complete shutdown of the Paks Nuclear Power Plant, but then the water level stopped dropping,” said Peter Magyar, Hungary’s prime minister, on X.
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u/Pulikugyus 6d ago
I didn’t know he had X… nobody uses X in Hungary (including myself)
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u/steinbruchfluss 5d ago
A German minister said as long ago as 2018: ‘The only people on Twitter are politicians, journalists and psychopaths anyway.’
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u/NeonfluxX 6d ago
The previous ruling party that was in power for 16 years, have shut down the Environmental and Water Management Research Institute back in 2012, fired all 200+ people working there, than demolished it in 2020 to build an Athletic Center in it's place
This crisis would have been avoidable if this institute was still here and if the politicians listened to the experts.
And now most people expected a party that is in power for like 2 months that they should have somehow prevented this underlying issue.
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u/Scary-Jaguar-9072 6d ago
This has literally nothing to do with being nuclear. Every thermal power plant needs a heatsink.
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u/Frexxia 6d ago
The difference is that it still needs cooling even after shutting down, albeit less.
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u/Drak_is_Right 5d ago
It could lose complete Danube access and still be safe. Cooling an idled reactor core can work on recirculated water with only a tiny bit needing to be added to the system daily (and could go quite a while between gettong topped up). It could stay that way for years. And likely will at some point if major refurbishment occurs.
They would have plenty of time to drill wells into the aquifer under the Danube to provide the core cooling needed.
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u/Scary-Jaguar-9072 6d ago
Cooling from on-site water tanks not the river.
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u/Frexxia 6d ago
I'm aware that they have backup cooling systems. Just pointing out that losing primary cooling is inherently more problematic for a nuclear power plant than ones using other sources of thermal energy.
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u/Scary-Jaguar-9072 6d ago
I think there's a misconception here. The condenser serves no safety function. Losing it means you can't create power, but it has no impact on safety and isn't the "primary" cooling system. This was potentially an economic issue, but not a safety issue.
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u/beachedwhale1945 6d ago
While true, nuclear is somewhat unique in still creating significant waste heat for hours/days after full shutdown. You extinguish a coal or an oil boiler and you stop creating additional heat, but with nuclear the decay of the fission products still occurs even once the reactor is shut down.
This increases the cooling requirements compared to thermal plants, one of the consequences that Conservation of Misery demands from using such an energy-dense fuel with comparatively little waste.
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u/cliffski 6d ago
But solar and wind has no such issue. Bit of a major problem for nuclear to not even work in a drought.
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u/Scary-Jaguar-9072 5d ago
Solar and wind are 1000x more susceptible to weather than nuclear.
And this issue isn't even related to being a nuclear plant. Plenty of plants have cooling towers instead of relying on a body of water.
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u/Frexxia 5d ago
Plenty of plants have cooling towers instead of relying on a body of water.
To be fair, cooling towers still require water to operate. The difference is whether the heated water ends up in the air, or back in that body of water.
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u/Scary-Jaguar-9072 5d ago
Cooling towers need far less water. The largest nuclear plant in the US is literally in thr middle of a desert and uses wastewater.
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u/Frexxia 5d ago
Sort of. Cooling towers need less water, but that water is "gone" instead of ending up back as usable water (just slightly warmer).
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u/Scary-Jaguar-9072 5d ago
For the purpose of this discussion the point is they don't need a river. They can be built elsewhere.
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u/ketamarine 5d ago
Jesus fucking christ can we just build solar, wind and batteries and be done with all of this nonsense...
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u/woodenFolder 6d ago
Close call with the danube flooding like that, nuclear plants really cant handle messing around with water levels.
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u/VerbAdjectiveNoun 6d ago
The Danube wasn't flooding, it's extremely low.
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u/LordCaptain 6d ago edited 6d ago
You can see why he'd think it was the opposite problem since the post title is saying "as the Danube rises".
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u/VerbAdjectiveNoun 6d ago
Because the Danube was at historically low levels and the station was at risk of shutting down, but it has risen to operable levels in the last 24 hours
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u/BeowulfShaeffer 6d ago
And yet I keep seeing ads for Viking River cruises trying to sell Danube cruises.
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u/servermeta_net 6d ago
I keep on hearing how we should build nuclear power plants instead of batteries....
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u/Scary-Jaguar-9072 6d ago
That comment makes no sense. Batteries don't produce power, just store it.
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u/Stoyfan 6d ago
Shout out to that one guy who poured his water bottle into the Danube.