The leaky tank in question at the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in South Haven holds 300,000 gallons of water in case of emergencies or a planned refueling outage. In a written statement issued late Tuesday night a Palisades spokesman says workers have been collecting and analyzing water that’s leaked from the tank.
On Tuesday workers collected 31 gallons of water. At that point administrators declared the tank "inoperable" and shut down the plant down while workers fix the leak.
The company says this is a planned shutdown – because they’ve known about the leak for several weeks and have had time to prepare.
Palisades had five unplanned shutdowns in 2011. Because of that the power plant now has one of the worst safety ratings in the country.
