Slovenia admits alert error after nuclear incident
Slovenia`s nuclear agency wrongly informed its neighbours that an incident at an atomic power plant was an exercise, but soon corrected its mistake, Environment Minister Janez Podobnik said Thursday.
"It used the wrong form. It used a form that had `exercise` on it. It was a mistake that was a genuine human error," he told reporters as he arrived to chair a meeting of European Union environment ministers in Luxembourg.
Podobnik said the error following the coolant leak Wednesday at the Krsko nuclear plant was spotted "in a few minutes" and corrected, but Austria in particular was furious about the mix-up.
"It`s not okay to set off an alarm in Europe and inform Austria, Italy and Hungary that it`s only an exercise," said Austrian Environment Minister Josef Proell.
"This has to be immediately clarified, and we want to know how this contradictory information came about," he said.
"The Austrian authorities have conducted tests at the border but they have not detected any increased radioactivity," he added, insisting: "There is no absolute security when it comes to nuclear power."
The correct form was used to notify the European Commission, which then issued an EU-wide alert.
But an EU official said Slovenia was not obliged to warn at all about the leak -- spotted in the primary cooling system and causing staff to shut down the plant -- unless the government had to "take action of a widespread nature".
However the mix-up raised questions about procedure in such incidents.
"We will certainly have to ask: `Why did you do it?`," said German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, even though he conceded: "I prefer to have an unnecessary alert, than to have too few alerts."
In the end, Slovenian ministers said, the leak posed no threat and was expected to be repaired in a few days.
"The information I have this morning is that nothing problematic happened," said Interior Minister Dragutin Mate, as he arrived for a meeting of EU interior ministers.
"The environment is not polluted, everything is OK. It`s a stable situation," assured Mate, whose country holds the EU`s rotating presidency.
In Brussels, the EU`s executive arm responded Wednesday by activating its European Community Urgent Radiological Information Exchange (ECURIE) system, immediately transmitting the information to all 27 member nations.
The system was introduced in 1987 after the Chernobyl disaster provide early notification and information exchange "in the event of a radiological or nuclear emergency".
"This is the first time the alert system has been used," said EU energy spokesman Ferran Tarradellas Espuny.
Slovenian authorities said in a statement that the plant at Krsko, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) east of the capital Ljubljana, had been "preventively shut down" after the leak was detected.
"Only a very minor repair is needed in a few days to come," said Podobnik.
The Krsko nuclear power plant, co-owned by Slovenia and neighbouring Croatia, was constructed in the late 1980s and has a net electrical output of 696 MW.
It produces 20 percent of all electricity used in Slovenia and satisfies 15 percent of Croatia`s power needs.
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