"Close Sellafield!" read the ad in Saturday's issue of The Times. "Sellafield poses an unacceptable and unnecessary risk to our environment."

The advertisement was signed by 110 members of Prime Minister Bertie Ahern's Fianna Fail party.

"My party is the largest in Ireland, and we want to bring home to people in Britain how strongly we in Ireland feel about the danger posed to the entire population of these islands by the current operations at Sellafield and in particular by the proposed new MOX operation," Ahern said in a statement.

He was referring to the mixed plutonium and uranium oxide (MOX) plant at Sellafield completed in 1996, which has been marred by financial concerns, court challenges and scandals since 1999 which have stalled its production schedule.

"We will campaign ceaselessly to prevent the opening of the MOX plant and to shut Sellafield - for all our sakes," Ahern said.

Ireland has been pressing for the closure of the Sellafield complex for years, arguing that plant -- located in northwestern England, not far from Ireland -- poses environmental dangers.

Ahern has called the plant a "surviving dinosaur of a defunct military-industrial complex" that posed the single most serious threat to the Irish environment.

Ireland fears the 1950s-era plant pollutes the Irish Sea and may be a target for a terrorist attack.

The country brought its complaints before a UN maritime tribunal last week in a bid to block Britain's plans to expand the plant and make operational the MOX, on which work is set to begin December 20.

Technician Jakub Tyfa in the operational room of the troubled Czech Temelin nuclear power plant as the staff at the plant's first reactor started the fission reaction again 12 August 2001. Operational tests began in November 2000 but the plant had to be shut down on 24 April 2001 after a series of malfunctions occured in the main turbine generator. AFP/EPA Photo by David Veis

Meanwhile, on the other side of Europe Austria's ruling coalition is struggling to contain an embarrassing cross border row over a glitch-plagued Czech nuclear plant, amid far-right Freedom Party threats to veto Prague's EU entry over the issue.

Opposition leaders on Friday tabled a parliamentary motion calling for early elections, claiming the two-party ruling coalition was fatally split over the Temelin nuclear power plant in southern Bohemia.

"We are convinced that this government has comprehensively shown its inability to act, and that Austria should be rid of it," said Social Democrat head Alfred Gusenbauer.

Both ruling parties rushed to dismiss the opposition claim as wishful thinking and said they would stay in power until the next scheduled election in 2003.

Few analysts expect the row to break up the coalition, but it has clouded the country's political scene for weeks, and it is unclear how it will be resolved.

The Freedom Party, whose entry into power last year sparked unprecedented EU sanctions, is bluntly insisting Czech authorities shut down the Soviet-built Temelin plant.

"We want Temelin shut down," said far-right Vice-Chancellor Susanne Riess-Passer, who took over from controversial politician Joerg Haider as party leader shortly after he struck a power-sharing deal with conservatives.

"The Freedom Party is ready, if the Czechs do not act, to maintain our veto including on the ratification of EU membership," she added.

The far-right has also defied its coalition partners by organizing a non-binding referendum in January over the issue. "A large popular vote will not be able to be ignored," said Riess-Passer.

Haider has even demanded a full-blown national referendum on Temelin if the January questionnaire is backed by over 800,000 Austrians, or 10 percent of the population.

The Soviet-designed plant at Temelin, barely 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the Austrian border, had been fiercely contested even before it was first powered up in October last year.

Ecological protestors have staged repeated border blockades to protest the plant, with wide public backing in a country where nuclear power is a fiercely emotive issue. Austria voted against atomic energy in a 1978 referendum.

Last December Vienna and Prague signed an accord, brokered by EU enlargement commissioner Guenter Verheugen, letting Temelin start commercial operation on condition it was given a clean bill of health by inspectors.

But while the inspections took place, the plant itself has suffered a seemingly unending series of technical problems, although none of them affect the nuclear reactors.

Conservative Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel is seeking to play down splits over the issue.

The row, which has been simmering for months, has come to a head because Prague is set to close the energy "chapter" of EU negotiations by the end of the year.

Schuessel has himself in the past threatened to block the energy chapter talks if there was no progress on Temelin.

But told by Verheugen that time was running out, he has eased off from confrontational language over the issue and clearly distanced himself from his far-right coalition partner's threats.

"We don't want to blackmail anyone, we are just trying very firmly to seek the highest possible security standards," he said, calling the political row "unnecessary."

Schuessel's economy minister Martin Bartenstein said categorically the government would not veto the Czech's accession to the EU.

"A veto would land our country in a state of isolation such as it has never known before," he warned in the latest issue of the weekly magazine News.

UPDATE:
Reactor restarted at glitch-troubled Czech plant
PRAGUE, Nov 26 (AFP) - A reactor at the Czech Republic's controversial Temelin nuclear power plant, which has been plagued by a stream of technical problems, is to be refired this week, a spokesman for the plant announced on Monday.

Reactor number one at the Soviet-designed plant was shut down at the end of October after a leak was discovered in the cooling system.

The 1,000-megawatt reactor will be started up on Wednesday. Two days later it will be reconnected to the country's power supply so that safety tests on it can continue, said plant spokesman Milan Nebesar.

Reactor 1 was first fired up in October 2000 to undergo a series of safety tests. At each successful phase of testing, the power output is increased. The reactor must function correctly at 100-percent capacity before it can start commercial operation.

Nebesar said the reactor would run at 75-percent capacity in the coming test phase.

The reactor was shut down last month after a device designed to keep water in the plant's auxiliary cooling system below 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit) was found not to be air-tight.

Repairing the fault, which was detected by a camera surveillance system installed inside the reactor, meant the reactor had to be cooled to 39 degrees Celsius, Nebesar said.

Checks and maintenance were also carried out while the reactor was out of action, particularly on turbine in the power-generating circuit, he added. The turbine has been affected by a series of problems this year, including vibrations in the power-generating circuit which damaged its rotor blades.

The Temelin plant, which is located in southern Bohemia, just 60 kilometres (38 miles) from the Austrian border, has encountered numerous technical difficulties since it was fired up last year.

It has also run into fierce opposition from Austria which voted against nuclear energy in a 1978 referendum.

An Austrian regional official suggested last week that his country's citizens should buy the plant so they could close it down for good.

The plant, which is due to be fully operational by 2002, comprises two 1,000-megawatt Soviet-designed VVER reactors, each equipped with security and monitoring systems supplied by the US firm Westinghouse. Reactor two is not yet operational.

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