The Cernavoda nuclear power plant will enter the shutdown procedure in the next two days, given a decrease in the level and flow of the Danube, and the shutdown could last at least two weeks, Sorin Rânda?u, deputy director general of the National Administration Romanian Waters, said on Tuesday.

'The levels in the area have dropped significantly, they have decreased by another six centimetres in the last few hours. There is no upstream input. 1,370 cubic metres /sec is reached today, at the entrance in Romania. I have never encountered such low values of flows. That means that the nuclear power plant will enter the shutdown procedure in the next two days,' Randasu told Digi24 private broadcaster.

According to him, in the coming days values of about 1,600 cubic metres /sec are estimated in the area of the Bala branch, which means that flows below 300 cubic metres /sec will reach Cernavoda.

'On Monday, my colleagues measured right there, in the area of the bifurcation, towards the Danube-Black Sea Canal and the central one, and the flow was around 335 cubic metres/sec. So, in the coming days we will reach values of 280 cubic meters/s, but only part of this flow passes to the plant, and if the value is below 45 cubic metres/sec, practically the plant can no longer operate. That is why the plant enters into the shutdown procedure, according to the information we have at this moment.'

He added that, under the current circumstances, the shutdown of the plant is inevitable and could last at least two weeks.

'At this moment, at the forecasted levels and flows, I don't think anything additional can be done, because there is no more time, the dredging also takes time. This dredging is an additional one to everything that has been done so far, so 100,000 cubic metres have been dredged in the last seven days. It is very clear that moving forward, unfortunately, the nuclear power plant will shut down. This is inevitable, on all the data we have, because the minimum period at the entry into the forecasted country is at least one week, and from the entry into the country to the Cernavoda area it takes another week. So, for about two weeks at least the plant will be shut down,' Randasu added.

At the same time, he said that in the next five days it will not rain at all in the entire Danube basin.

'There will be at least five days without precipitation, there will be no rain in Austria either. Hungary, as far as we can see, has taken advantage of the slight increase in the level, but they will probably end up in the same situation again, the level will decrease if it does not rain. There is no precipitation in the entire Danube basin, and the precipitation that will be in Romania is somewhere around 5-10 litres per square metre. It doesn't matter at all, because it evaporates immediately when temperatures are higher. (...) A forecast we rely on has 3-5 days. On the Danube we extended it to seven days. We have already made estimates for two weeks. More than that I cannot say. (...) At the moment, all the data lead us to an extremely difficult period in terms of the precipitation deficit and the levels that will be recorded in the next period,' the official said.

He explained that dredging is necessary for 'when flows start to increase slightly'.

'Through the dredging that is being carried out now, the plant will start up 2-3 days earlier, which means a gain from this point of view. So, 2-3 days of energy production means a lot,' Randasu explained. AGERPRES (RO - editing by: Nicoleta Banciulea; EN - writing by: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu)