Ljubljana  - The shutdown of the Slovenian nuclear power plant at Krsko following a coolant leak was standard procedure and "nothing unusual," plant director Stane Rozman said Thursday.

"We handled it properly. It was the foreseen security procedure for such cases," he told Radio Slovenija. In his words, the problem was located and would be eliminated "within a few days."

Krsko, in south-west Slovenia close to the Croatian border, shut down the reactor within two hours of coolant beginning to spill from its primary cooling system Wednesday afternoon.

When the plant issued the alert, it was passed on to all 27 European Union member states. No discharge of radioactive matter to the environment occurred.

Rozman refused to comment on the handling of the problem by Slovenian authorities.

The country's electricity grid, which draws 20 per cent of its needs from Krsko, remained stable, the deficit covered with imports from the Balkans and Germany, the radio report said. Krsko also supplies power to Croatia.

The 696-megawatt light-water reactor in Krsko was built by US firm Westinghouse from 1974 to 1984. It is the only commercial nuclear plant in the former Yugoslavia.

The incident, while small in itself, is likely to re-ignite the debate over the safety of nuclear power at a time when it is increasingly being hailed as a way to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

Nuclear safety is a highly sensitive subject in the EU, with several member states - notably Italy and Germany - vowed to phase out the use of nuclear power.

Bowing to EU demands, Bulgaria has shut down four Soviet-era nuclear generators at its power plant in Kosloduy in 1999 and 2006, leaving it with two modern,
1,000-megawatt Russian-built generators.

Another former Communist-bloc EU state, Lithuania, is due to shut down the Soviet-built Ignalina nuclear plant by the end of next year. (dpa)