Cheshire Cat Photo Blog(...said the Cat: 'we're all mad here....')

One of the two units at the San Onofre nuclear power plant was shut down by officials this evening after sensors detected a possible leak in a steam generator tube at 4:30 PM U.S. Pacific Time. The unit was completely shut down by an hour later, according to Southern California Edison.

Spokesperson Jennifer Manfre told the L.A. Times:

“The potential leak poses no imminent danger to the plant workers or the public.”

Crews are assessing the situation to determine whether a leak had occurred. There have been no evacuations so far.

The press release states that Southern California Edison had begun a precautionary shutdown of Unit 3 because of a possible leak. There has been no release to the atmosphere.

Unit 2 is currently offline for a planned maintenance, refueling and technology upgrade outage. Southern California Edison has ample reserve power to meet customer needs while Unit 3 is offline.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was immediately informed of this development.

Updates concerning the shutdown can be found here. A Twitter update two hours ago, as I write this, said that the possible leak is inside the containment dome, with no release into the atmosphere.

-Bill at

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