Europe’s Drought Turns Into a Power Crisis: Low Rivers Throttle Nuclear and Hydro Across the Continent

Europe’s drought stopped being about crops this week and became about electricity.

Rivers are running too low to cool the reactors and spin the turbines a continent depends on. Hungary’s Paks — half the national power mix — is throttling back. Romania’s Cernavodă is cutting output. Twelve of France’s fifty-seven reactors have trimmed production. Across the Balkans and Italy, hydro is collapsing: one Serbian plant is down 80%. And the heat makes it worse, not better — still, hot days drag down wind exactly when demand peaks, and solar panels lose efficiency once their surface passes 60°C. The bill for all of this lands in Q3, and energy-intensive industry is directly in the firing line.

That’s the story I lead with this week, but it isn’t the only one. BP Plc is walking away from an aging oil basin.

A wheat supply risk large enough to move the global trade is sitting completely unpriced.

Analysts trimmed their carbon forecasts, yet the first half of the year is running below the full-year number, which quietly argues the opposite of what the headline says.

And gold won’t rally even as the dollar softens, waiting on a clearer signal from the Fed.

The paper market and the physical one are telling two different stories right now. I break down all of them, with the charts, in the full article on my Substack. If you want this analysis every week, subscribing there takes ten seconds.