Hungary's only nuclear power plant is down. Al Jazeera reported on Sunday that Paks "was forced to shut for the first time in four decades as water levels in the Danube River sank to a record low" [3]. Prime Minister Péter Magyar had announced earlier the same day that the plant would be powered down on Sunday, which Al Jazeera's Hungary report described as its first full shutdown in 44 years [1].
This outlet reported on Sunday morning that the wind-down would finish Tuesday or Wednesday. That timeline came from Magyar's own words, and the river overtook it by two days. The output figures show why a schedule was never going to hold: 965 megawatts on Friday, 240 overnight, against normal running of about 2,000 [1].
The Danube at Paks stands at minus 134 centimetres and is forecast to fall to minus 144 [1]. The previous record was minus 98, set in 2018 [1]. The river is therefore already 36 centimetres below the record it broke, with another 10 expected. A plant that cools with what the river gives it does not get to keep its own calendar.
How long it has been since the last full shutdown is not settled in the reporting. Al Jazeera's Hungary piece says 44 years [1]. Euronews says 42 [2]. Al Jazeera's Europe-wide report the same day rounds it to four decades [3]. None of the three is traced in the fetched reporting to a plant record we can check, so all three are printed here rather than one being chosen.
The Euronews report of July 31 described Reactor 3 down and warned that a 2,000 megawatt deficit would arrive "from Monday at the latest" [2]. It arrived on Sunday.
Magyar's framing has shifted with it. He warned that Hungary faces a critical five days because of the drying Danube, the nuclear shutdown and water-use restrictions now imposed on more than 100 cities and villages [3]. That last element is the one that reaches households directly, and it is running in parallel with the loss of the country's baseload generation rather than after it.
The response from outside Hungary remains offers rather than mechanisms. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said Slovakia was "closely monitoring the energy situation" and stood ready to assist [2]. The European Commission, as of the July 31 reporting, stood ready to convene its Electricity Coordination Group, a conditional formulation that had not become a convened meeting in any source fetched for this piece [2].
What is confirmed is the shutdown and the water level. What is missing from every source fetched is the way back: no Danube level at which Paks restarts, no operator statement giving the hour the shutdown completed, and no estimate of how long Hungary expects to run without roughly 2,000 megawatts of its own generation [1][2][3].
The cost is not abstract for anyone living under the water-use restrictions Magyar described, and it is not abstract for a grid that has to find the equivalent of a nuclear plant in the first week of August. A drought took a reactor complex off a national grid. What is on the table to replace it, as of Sunday night, is a Slovak offer of help and a coordination group that stands ready to be convened.
