Call me cynical but I do think an outlet called oil price dot com may not be entirely impartial when they report on this. That is not to say what they wrote here is wrong; I wouldn’t know. It just has a touch of pot and kettle about it.
Since the power networks are linked and European countries import and export electricity, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that next to renewables power from gas stepped in to fill the nuclear gap. And the price for natural gas is often linked to a certain other commodity price.
Several nuclear reactors had to shut down because there was not enough water for cooling.
From euronews:
an environmental protection requirement to avoid discharging excessively hot water into rivers already warming because of the heatwave
That twists it to “protecting nature raises your electricity bill” where it’s just that that the plant, when built, did not take into account water levels could drop this low. As if they assumed climate change wouldn’t be this influential or something.
It’s not twisting anything, it’s verifiable fact. Water temperatures in rivers in the current heatwaves we’ve had in Europe that are more than 10 degrees celsius above mean average temperatures has meant that the temperatures in rivers and lakes are already reaching levels that are causing severe issues to the wildlife and plants within them. Dumping millions of litres of hot water from power stations into them just makes a critical situation worse.