Hungary's Paks Returns to Full Output as MVM Brings Forward Final Unit Restart
Hungary's 2 GW nuclear plant is back fully online faster than signalled, ending a drought-forced shutdown that had cut generation to 480 MW.
MVM brought forward the restart of the last offline unit at Hungary's 2 GW Paks nuclear power plant on Tuesday (2026-08-25), Montel reported, completing a full restoration of the country's sole nuclear facility ahead of the schedule the operator had telegraphed six days earlier.4
The recovery matters for Central European power balances. Paks is Hungary's dominant source of baseload generation, and its partial outage during the Danube drought had left the government in an uncomfortable position: keeping just two turbines running at a combined 480 MW while falling river levels threatened even that residual output.2
MVM had signalled the broader return on Wednesday (2026-08-19), notifying markets that three offline reactors were connecting to the grid from Tuesday (2026-08-18) night and that the plant would be fully operational during the week of 2026-08-24. The brought-forward timing of the last unit moves completion earlier within that window.3
Hungary's prime minister moved to contain the political fallout weeks before the recovery arrived. He vowed publicly to keep the two operational turbines running despite the falling Danube, framing it in urgent terms: "We have to keep them running for two more days despite the steadily" falling river, according to Montel. The statement captured just how thin the margin for continued nuclear output had become.2
The drought's reach extended south. Romania's Cernavoda nuclear power plant shut both its reactors — each rated at 680 MW — eliminating roughly 20% of Romania's total power generation, according to OilPrice.com reporting from the week of 2026-08-17. Bucharest responded by restarting the Rovinari Group 4 coal-fired unit, a 300 MW plant that had been offline, to partially offset the gap.1
That restart illustrates the dispatch sequence when baseload nuclear drops out across the Danube basin in summer: coal capacity sitting idle gets called back, and the economics of doing so depend on where gas prices sit. ICE Endex TTF front-month gas stood at €68.31/MWh at 08:15 UTC on Tuesday (2026-08-25), high enough to keep coal competitive in markets where carbon costs do not fully close the gap.1
With Paks returning to full capacity, Hungary loses its justification for emergency dispatch overrides. The political imperative to run the plant through drought stress recedes for now. But the Danube water levels that triggered the crisis have not been reported as recovered, and a return to low-flow conditions before autumn rainfall normalises would test whether MVM's accelerated restart timeline was sustainable.3,2
Romania's situation is harder to resolve quickly. Restarting Rovinari on coal covers some of the Cernavoda gap on a nameplate basis, but 300 MW against a combined reactor capacity of 1,360 MW is a fraction of what was lost.1 There is no indication in available reporting that either Cernavoda unit is close to returning. The coal plant's restart pushes Romania's generation mix in the wrong direction for its emissions trajectory, and how long that dispatch persists depends on how long Danube flows keep the nuclear units sidelined.1
Paks completing its recovery faster than scheduled removes one near-term supply risk from Central European power markets. What remains unresolved is whether the Danube basin's hydrology normalises enough before the next dry season to prevent a repeat — or whether operators from Budapest to Bucharest begin pricing drought-contingency capacity into their planning horizons well ahead of summer 2027.3,2