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ROUNDUP: Temelin leak clouds Czech-Austrian relations

Thursday, March 01, 2007 at 16:34

By Ivonne Marschall and Katerina Zachovalova

Prague/Vienna (dpa) - Czech officials failed to inform Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer about a leak of mildly radioactive water that occurred the night before his visit to Prague Tuesday, spokesmen for Czech and Austrian leaders said on Thursday.

After he was informed of the leak on Thursday, Gusenbauer immediatelly phoned his Czech counterpart Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek and told him this "was not the form he imagined of open, friendly cooperation", his spokesman Stefan Poettler said.

The spokesman for Czech government Martin Schmarcz told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the Temelin incident was not relevant enough to require the Czech side to inform the Austrian leader.

"Technical details were not debated," he said, adding later that the leak "is not a matter about which to inform the Austrian (chancellor)".

Schmarcz said he did not know about the leak on Tuesday and did not know whether the prime minister had any knowledge of it during the talks with his Austrian counterpart.

Following a surge in protests against Temelin by its Austrian opponents, the leaders of the two countries agreed in talks in Prague on Tuesday to set up a joint parliamentary commission on the controversial nuclear power plant.

The new chancellor told reporters on Tuesday more transparency is needed in order to dismantle animosities on both sides.

An Austrian government meeting is scheduled to formally endorse the decision to form the commission on Saturday.

Temelin informed Austrian authorities and the press about the leak of 2,000 litres, or an amount equal to ten average bathtubs, of mildly radioactive water in the plant's first unit on Thursday morning, or two days after it happened. The step came under an attack from both Austrian Temelin opponents and politicians.

The Upper-Austrian anti-Temelin group atomstopp-oberoesterreich said in a statement that the Czech Republic preferred to "gloss over the latest problem" - by its count the 100th since Temelin's 2000 launch.

"How embarassing would it have been for the chancellor if he was sent off with only the agreement for a parliamentary commission in the face of the 100th problem case?" speakers Roland Egger and Gabriele Schweiger said.

According to the Temelin spokesman Milan Nebesar, international agreements do not require the plant to inform the Austrian authorities immediately about a case of this importance.

"If they read the (relevant) article of the Melk treaty related to events of this kind they will see it provides a time limit of 72 hours," Nebesar told dpa, referring to a 2000 treaty between the two countries aimed at preventing safety disputes by a flow of information on the plant.

Nebesar said that it has been a standard practice for Temelin to inform the Austrian side at the same time as the press.

The spokesman for the Czech State Office for Nuclear Safety Pavel Pittermann told dpa that Temelin first notified his office of "the insignificant matter" on Tuesday at 0500 GMT and then followed up with more details at around 1100 GMT, or at around the time when Gusenbauer arrived in Prague.

According to Temelin's spokesman, the leak did not pose a threat either to Temelin's employees or to the environment.

The leak happened when the plant's employees were filling a system that supplies the unit's primary circuit.

The water ran out through a manually-operated faucet left open by an employee who could not move it during a maintenance check, and left it that way assuming it was closed, Pittermann said.

According to Pittermann, the leaked liquid covered a 30-square- metre space that was immediately sluiced down and the water collected in a tank.

The plant's first unit is currently shut down for a fuel replacement, and is to be put back into operation in about a month.

The incident took place at the time when Austrian opponents of the Temelin plant have been putting pressure on their government so it sues the Czech Republic over the controversial facility for an alleged breach of the Melk treaty.

The Austrian anti-nuclear activists blocked border crossings three times within last three weeks and plan more protests and blockades in order to achieve their goal.

Temelin is a twin-unit, Soviet-era nuclear power plant updated with American technology, 60 kilometres from the Czech-Austrian border.

It was launched in 2000 despite protests by Austrian leaders and anti-nuclear activists, who dispute Czech claims that Western security controls had rendered the plant safe.

A similar leak took place in the plant's second unit last August, the CTK news agency reported.

ROUNDUP: Temelin leak clouds Czech-Austrian relations