Romania Day-Ahead Power Holds Above €150 Four Weeks Into Cernavoda Drought Outage
With both Cernavoda reactors offline since mid-August and coal replacing only a fraction of lost output, Romanian day-ahead power is stuck above €150/MWh.
Romanian day-ahead power settled at €152.37/MWh on Monday (2026-09-07), keeping the country's spot market elevated nearly four weeks after the Cernavoda nuclear plant shut its last operating reactor over drought-driven coolant water concerns on the Danube. The gap between what came offline and what has replaced it remains wide.1,4
Cernavoda was generating around 20% of Romania's electricity before the crisis, with two reactors each carrying 680 MW of installed capacity. Unit 1, a 650 MW unit, was taken offline on July 31 (2026-07-31). Unit 2, running at a derated 464 MW when the drought peaked, began a controlled shutdown on August 13 (2026-08-13) after operator Nuclearelectrica said Danube water levels were continuously falling. Oilprice.com reported the river had reached a 90-year low by that point.1,3,4
Romania had tried to keep Unit 2 running. Engineers raced on August 6 (2026-08-06) to sink four barges in the Danube to redirect river flow and preserve coolant water intake at the plant. The intervention bought days, not weeks. Conditions deteriorated regardless and the shutdown proceeded.5
With both units dark by mid-August, Romania had lost a combined 1,360 MW of installed nuclear capacity — its entire Cernavoda fleet. Nuclearelectrica's Unit 2 disconnection brought 48% of southeast Europe's online nuclear capacity offline, Montel reported. To partially offset Romania's loss, the government restarted Rovinari Group 4, a 300 MW coal unit, during the week of August 17 (2026-08-17). That is less than a quarter of what Cernavoda was providing.2,4
But prices on the day of the final nuclear shutdown did not track the scale of the supply loss. Montel reported southeast European spot power fell more than 12% on August 13 (2026-08-13), even as Nuclearelectrica confirmed Unit 2's disconnection. Hungary's day-ahead price, Montel's cited regional benchmark, settled sharply lower despite the nuclear cuts. Demand slack or surplus renewables appear to have dominated price formation in that session.2
That one-session reprieve did not change Romania's underlying supply picture. ICE Endex TTF front-month gas held at €73.33/MWh on Tuesday (2026-09-08), keeping fuel costs elevated for any gas-fired capacity competing to fill the void, which compresses the range within which Romanian power prices can ease even when demand softens.2,4
Nuclearelectrica has not given a public timeline for restarting either unit. A return to service requires Danube levels to recover to a point where coolant water intake is no longer threatened. According to Jurist.org, Romania remains without any nuclear power generation, and the government has been prompted to act — though no restart date has appeared publicly.6
The Rovinari coal addition provides some relief to the dispatch stack, but 300 MW of coal against a 1,360 MW nuclear absence leaves Romania short of baseload. Danube hydrology is now the only variable that unlocks a Cernavoda restart. No operator guidance or official forecast currently available puts a date on that, and Romania is moving into autumn still without a timeline.4,6