(LUXEMBOURG) - Slovenian Interior Minister Dragutin Mate assured on Thursday that a cooling system leak at the country's only nuclear power plant posed no threat.

"The information I have this morning is that nothing problematic happened," said Mate as he arrived for a meeting in Luxembourg 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.

The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency was monitoring events at Slovenia's only nuclear power plant following the leak on Wednesday that prompted an EU-wide radiation alert.

According to the Slovenian authorities, plant operators had detected a loss in the reactor's cooling system and decided to manually shut it down.

The Slovenian Nuclear Safety Administration (SNSA) said in a statement that the loss of coolant was detected in time and "no radiation was released to the environment and there was no off-site impact".

Mate echoed that the Slovenian authorities had "stopped the nuclear power plant for preventative reasons."

Italian Environment Minister Stefania Prestigiacomo, in Luxembourg for an EU environment ministers' meeting, echoed that there was no environmental threat.

"We have clarified that there is no risk to the environment. There is too much alarmism," said Prestigiacomo, whose country borders Slovenia.

The European Commission issued an EU-wide alert after Slovenia began shutting down the nuclear power plant.

The EU's executive arm activated its European Community Urgent Radiological Information Exchange (ECURIE) system, immediately transmitting the information to all 27 EU member states.

The radiation alert system was introduced in 1987 after the Chernobyl disaster. It requires early notification and exchange of information "in the event of a radiological or nuclear emergency".

All member states are required to inform the commission "at appropriate intervals" about the measures they are taking and the radioactivity levels they have measured.

"This is the first time the alert system has been used," said EU energy spokesman Ferran Tarradellas Espuny.

"The ECURIE system has been used for the exchange of information and for exercises before but this is the first time an alert has been issued," he told AFP.

Slovenian authorities said in a statement the nuclear power plant at Krsko, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) east of the capital Ljubljana, had been "preventively shut down" after the leak was detected.

It added "there was no need for an emergency shutdown of the plant and the failure did not and is not expected to affect the environment."

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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