The Strongest El Niño on Record Lands on the Tightest Energy Market in Years

Romania spent more than 2 million euros this month detonating rocks and sinking barges in the Danube, trying to shove enough water toward the Cernavoda nuclear plant to keep its reactors cool. It didn’t work. On Aug. 13, Nuclearelectrica began a controlled shutdown of the plant’s second reactor, the first time drought has taken Cernavoda fully offline since 2003. That is about a fifth of Romania’s electricity. Dacia and Ford idled their Romanian factories to free up power for everyone else. Europe’s drought has its…