TEMELIN, Apr 2, 2001 -- (Agence France Presse) A disputed Czech nuclear plant was again powered down under emergency procedures after an oil leak, its latest in an increasingly frequent series of glitches, a spokesman said Monday.

Output from the Soviet-built Temelin plant, which has sparked fierce protests in neighboring Austria, was cut to less than 2 percent overnight after "several hundred liters" of oil leaked, said the spokesman.

The leak, in a secondary, non-nuclear circuit of the plant's sole reactor, was due to a "seal problem", said the spokesman.

The Temelin plant, some 60 kilometers (35 miles) from the Austrian border, was only powered up again on Sunday after its previous technical glitch. By Sunday night, it had been producing 40 percent of its 1,000 Megawatt maximum output.

The incident was the third in as many weeks, and follows a long series of problems and shutdowns at the plant since it was first powered up last October.

Managers at the plant announced last week that it will be completely shut down for at least a month in June threatening to delay a commercial launch Prague hoped would take place this summer.

The Czech government, which suffered a slump in economic growth in recent years, has pressing economic reasons for building the plant, which when fully on stream will provide some 20 percent of the country's power needs.

But neighboring Austria, which rejected nuclear energy in a 1978 referendum, has demanded safety guarantees for the plant.

Vienna at one stage threatened to block Prague's EU membership negotiations over Temelin.

But it signed an accord last December agreeing to allow the plant to start up, but only after safety and environmental studies had been carried out. The accord specified that the plant could start producing electricity commercially if all conditions were fulfilled. ((c) 2001 Agence France Presse)