Lost income, energy fears and a woolly mammoth: what Europe’s dried-up rivers have yielded

Heat and drought have affected shipping, power plants and tourism across eastern Europe – as well as unearthing some surprises Baking temperatures and drought across large swathes of central and eastern Europe have driven water levels on the Danube and Rhine rivers to record lows in some areas, hitting shipping, energy production and tourism hard. Extreme conditions aggravated by the climate emergency left Europe’s waterways from the Netherlands to the Black Sea parched, triggering compounding crises. For the first time in their history, Hungary and Romania had to shut down atomic reactors normally cooled by the Danube. The largest nuclear power plant in Hungary, the 44-year-old Paks which supplies nearly half of the country’s electricity, has been cutting output since Monday. The Paks power plant’s cold-water intake channel from the Danube. The prime minister, Péter Magyar, said the Paks plant was operating at less than ​50% capacity and was expected ​to be ​completely powered down next week. The shutdown could extend for weeks as Danube water ⁠levels are expected to remain too ⁠low to ​restart ‌it. “An energy crisis situation could arise beginning Monday,