Romania shut down the last working reactor at its only nuclear plant, Cernavoda, on Thursday 13 Aug after the Danube fell to record lows.[2] Nuclearelectrica said it did not foresee a restart within the next 10 days; its two 706-megawatt reactors provide about 20% of the country's power.[1][2] Romania declared a state of energy emergency for all of August and asked households and companies to cut consumption in peak hours.[2] The outage immediately threatens Moldova, which relies on Romanian power to cover its own shortages.[2]
The same summer is hitting nuclear cooling across the continent in two very different ways. In Hungary, two of the eight turbines at the Paks plant are producing electricity again after an earlier disruption.[1] In France, EDF cut output at multiple reactors and shut three units at Gravelines after a "massive influx of jellyfish" clogged cooling intakes — the second consecutive year a jellyfish swarm has shuttered reactors there.[1] Triodos estimates heat-related disruptions this summer could cost the EU 180 billion euros — roughly 1% of GDP.[1]
Drought in the east, biology in the north: two failure modes, one dependence on water that is no longer reliably cold and abundant.
Firefox announced on Bluesky (2026-08-10): "Our support for uBlock Origin isn't going anywhere."[3] The statement responds to Microsoft Edge soon locking out uBlock Origin and other Manifest V2 ad-blocking extensions as it follows Chrome's move to Manifest V3.[3] That makes Firefox the only major browser left that still supports uBlock Origin.[3]
One API migration quietly ended a decade of ad-blocking in Chromium; the browser that kept the old extension model now owns the entire privacy niche by default.
A magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck 68 km NNW of Ende, Indonesia on 2026-08-14 at 21:58 UTC, at 10 km depth — shallow and strong.[4] The USGS event is marked alert level orange with the "reviewed" status.[4]
[1] cnbc.com/2026/08/12/europe-heat-drought-nuclear-power — CNBC — Nuclear plants shut down as Europe's drought becomes an energy crisis (2026-08-12)
[2] theguardian.com — Romania shuts its last nuclear reactor as drought-hit Danube drops to record low (2026-08-14)
[3] pcworld.com — Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin (2026-08-13)
[4] earthquake.usgs.gov — M 7.7 - 68 km NNW of Ende, Indonesia (2026-08-14)