Emergency repair at nuclear plant

• Short-circuit impaired part of a nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine, official says


• No radiation threat, Ukraine's energy minister says


• Emergency repairs should be finished by Friday, minister says


• Problem leads to power shortages

(CNN) -- A short-circuit has impaired part of a nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine, causing power shortages in parts of the country but putting no one in danger of radiation, the country's newly appointed energy minister said Wednesday.

The incident at the plant in Zaporizhya happened last week, and emergency repairs should be finished by Friday, Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn said, according to state-run news agency Ukrinform.

"There is no threat," Demchyshyn said. "There are no issues with the reactor."

The short-circuit happened in a power-output system, he said. Information on what caused the problem wasn't immediately available. Low temperatures had recently caused an increase in demand for power, the ministry said in a written statement earlier this week.

"The imbalance of the power supply is due to the emergency repair of the energy unit #3 in Zaporizhya nuclear power plant, as well as inadequate supplies of coal in the power plants' warehouses," the Energy Ministry said in a statement Tuesday. "The situation is under control, and the unit will be under repair until December 5th," the ministry said.

Zaporizhya is in territory controlled by the Ukrainian government in Kiev. It is about 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of the city of Donestsk, which is a stronghold of pro-Russian rebels that have been battling Ukrainian forces for months in southeastern Ukraine.

The plant is about 520 kilometers (325 miles) southeast of Chernobyl, the Ukrainian community where a nuclear power plant reactor exploded when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union in 1986. It is estimated that more than 4,000 cleanup workers died and close to 70,000 were disabled from radiation-related causes. According to the United Nations, the explosion and fire that occurred affected, directly or indirectly, 9 million people due to the radioactive materials released into the atmosphere.