- BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania
will shut down its sole nuclear reactor in Cernavoda on the river Danube
by midnight on Saturday, due to the water's low level, a special government
commission of experts monitoring the plant said.
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- The 750-megawatt reactor, which went on stream in 1996,
accounts for more than 10 percent of the Balkan country's power output.
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- With low river flows and high water temperatures, nuclear
power plants across Europe have been facing shortages of cooling water
they need to operate normally.
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- The government commission said in a statement that the
procedures to stop the reactor, which started at 5:30 p.m. local time (10:30
a.m. EDT), were determined by the fact that the level of the Danube fell
by another two inches on Friday night.
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- Over the past three days, the Danube, which has fallen
to its lowest level in a century, dropped by more than 16 inches in Cernavoda
and meteorologists predict it will continue to fall by between 2 and 3.2
inches in the coming days.
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- "The reactor will be kept shut, respecting all the
security requirements, and will be restarted when the Danube will reach
the level needed for long-term functioning," the commission's statement
said.
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- Officials have said Romania will seek to increase power
generation at coal-based power plants to make up for the closure of the
Cernavoda reactor.
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