Power station spokesman Milan Nebesar said the first of the plant's two reactors had been shut down automatically at dawn after the safety system detected damp inside an electrical generator.

"In the next 24 hours, engineers will dry out... the generator before checking and testing it," he said. "Then the reactor will again be hooked up to the grid."

Nebesar said the breakdown was "not serious", but Austrian anti-nuclear group Atomstopp said a demonstration at the border crossing between the two countries could take place on Sunday.

"We have to have the agreement of the authorities," spokesman Andreas Reimer told the Czech CTK news agency, charging that the Temelin plant was in a "disastrous condition."

Demonstrators used a dozen tractors decorated with balloons inscribed with "Stop Temelin" to completely block the Wullowitz-Dolni Dvoriste border crossing between the two countries for an hour on October 8.

Protestors regard security at the Soviet-built power plant only 60 kilometers (40 miles) from the border with Austria as insufficient.

Construction work on the plant began in 1987. It was initially to have had four Soviet-technnology reactors but was scaled down after the fall of the Communist regime in 1989 to two.

The plant became operational in 2000 equipped with security systems supplied by the US company Westinghouse for the two VVER 1000 Type V 320 pressurized-water reactors.

Austria has been officially against nuclear power since 1978.

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