On the exchanges across Southeast Europe, the price of electricity crossed 700 euros per megawatt-hour. The sharpest jump was in Slovenia and Croatia; Greece and Bulgaria held the lowest prices. The most intense days were 3 and 4 August, when prices rose between 50 and 100 percent compared with the preceding weeks. The reason isn't geopolitics. It isn't a sanction, and it isn't somebody's cartel. The reason is that there isn't enough water. Rivers are shutting down reactors The low level of the Danube forced Hungary's Paks nuclear plant to cut output by 90 percent. Romania's Cernavoda cut by 50 percent. Slovenia's Krsko reduced capacity by 20 percent after high water temperatures in the Sava made it impossible to discharge heat - environmental rules forbid warming the river above set thresholds. Hydropower has the same illness. In Serbia, Iron Gate 1 is running at 20 percent of normal output, Iron Gate 2 at 30. And on the other side of the equation, regional consumption has risen between 5 and 20 percent - because when it's 40 degrees outside, air conditioning is not a suggestion. So the same heat that makes electricity essential also makes it unaffordable. This is a scenario with nobody to blame, and that is precisely what makes it harder than the ones where there is somebody. Romania sank barges to raise the Danube The most vivid detail in the whole story is the measure Romania resorted to in order to keep Cernavoda running: sinking barges to raise the water level. The plant covers roughly a fifth of the country's electricity production. That is not a solution. That is a state improvising as its options run out - and it is worth remembering as the image of the summer of 2026. It isn't just the region The problem reaches the continent's largest nuclear producer too. According to reports from the European energy sector, during the heatwaves in late June and mid-July French plants had to temporarily reduce available capacity by eight to nine gigawatts - about a fifth of the country's normal summer output. Krsko, for comparison, produces 35 to 38 percent of Slovenia's electricity, and half of its output goes to Croatia, where it covers 15 to 20 percent of demand. When one plant coughs, two countries sweat. Where we sit in this story Macedonia is part of the same regional market and buys on the same exchanges where the price spiked. Our hydro plants drink the same drought. This isn't a forecast about anyone's bill - it is the structure of the market we are plugged into. The question worth asking isn't what electricity will cost in August. The question is whether energy planning here accounts at all for the possibility that the rivers our plants and our neighbours' plants rely on will not be there in the same volume next decade. So far that assumption hasn't appeared in a single strategic document.