A cold winter for Europe

Natural gas prices are spiking, and the consequences could be serious.

European power crisis #1:

The nuclear power plant located in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, was damaged Thursday and was temporarily disconnected from power, as Russian and Ukrainian troops continue fighting in its vicinity.

The nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, had never been disconnected from power before, and the blackout comes as global leaders sound the alarm about potential nuclear catastrophe.

If severely damaged, nuclear waste from the plant, around twice the size of Chernobyl, could spread across the continent.

The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency warned that “every principle of nuclear safety has been violated” at the plant, and “what is at stake is extremely serious and extremely grave and dangerous.”

The electricity was successfully restored to the region later on Thursday, the Russian-installed governor Yevgeny Balitsky said in a statement.

I don’t know if this power plant provides any electricity to EU countries, but if - God forbid - there’s a repeat of 1986, Europe will sure as heck feel it. (Chernobyl might have been covered up for years had radiation not turned up in Sweden.)

European power crisis #2:

Energy traders in Europe are witnessing price increases that are hard to fathom. Natural gas, which is used to generate electricity and heat, now costs about 10 times more than it did a year ago. Electricity prices, tied to the price of gas, are also several times higher than what used to be considered normal.

As Russia tightens the screws on flows of gas, the energy markets are locked in a relentless upward climb. This week, benchmark European natural gas prices hit a series of records after Gazprom, the Russian gas giant, said it would temporarily shut a key pipeline to Germany at the end of August — a move that has further stoked market fears.

Electricity prices have been extremely volatile. In Britain, the wholesale price of a megawatt-hour of electricity (enough to supply about 2,000 homes for an hour) hit a record daily average of about 500 pounds, or $590, early this week, roughly five times the level of last August, according to Rajiv Gogna, a partner at LCP, a consulting firm.

[…]

Driving the prices is a fear that Europe will run out of gas this winter. Russia has slashed gas flows to Germany and other countries. Even before the coming three-day shutdown, Nord Stream 1, a key conduit of fuel to Germany, has been flowing at only 20 percent of capacity. These cutbacks are forcing gas providers to buy gas on the spot market at higher and volatile prices than under longer-term Gazprom contracts.

You might remember when Texas was walloped by winter storms a while back, and some people who’d signed on to pay wholesale prices for electricity saw catastrophic increases in their power bills.

Now imagine something like that, only for an entire continent.

The “realists,” Tankies and isolationists on Team anti-anti-Russia - which certainly doesn’t condone the invasion of Ukraine, goodness no, but… - are already sneering about how this is all our fault because we embarrassed Putin at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner or something. And a not-insignificant number of Europeans are inclined to agree.