Record low Rhine halts freight as heat strains Europe's power plants

What happened

• The Kaub gauge read 19 centimetres on Wednesday, 5 August; more than 300 cargo ships normally pass there daily.
• The Rhine carries about 80 percent of German inland shipping tonnage, some 280 million tonnes a year.
• Thyssenkrupp stopped its own push boats supplying Duisburg and hired shallow-draft vessels instead.
• Hungary nearly shut Paks, its only nuclear plant, as Danube cooling water ran short.
• Austria measured 41.2 C at Bad Deutsch-Altenburg, above Vienna's 41 C a day earlier.

The view from outside

Serbia's Politika centres southeastern Europe: Slovenia's Krsko plant cutting reactor power to 80 percent overnight, firefighters in Albania's Malakaster region, and a Greek fire that burned thousands of hectares of farmland northwest of Athens. Global Times reports the Danube at a record low in southeastern Romania, a stretch the German and British outlets do not cover.

What could happen next

• Germany's transport minister Steffen Bilger meets industry on Thursday; North Rhine-Westphalia's minister demands a national task force.
• ELWIS forecasts further falling levels; the Kiel Institute puts 30 low-water days at 0.3 percent of economic output.
• Open: how long Paks stays offline, and whether Germany's rail network, which FAZ calls degraded, can absorb diverted freight.
• Britain's health secretary Yvette Cooper wants NHS summer planning; London bus drivers plan a strike over cab temperatures.