An emergency was declared at the San Onofre nuclear power plant this past week.
Tuesday, an emergency alert was issued at the California power plant. It was rumored to be due to a nuclear emergency but was actually prompted after an ammonia leak was detected.
Reportedly, workers detected the leak around 3 p.m. As a precaution, the few workers that were inside were evacuated and according to numerous reports, no nuclear material was released. It was determined that the plant did not pose a threat to the public.
According to the L.A. Times, Southern California Edison spokeswoman Lauren Bartlett said the leak occurred in a make-up water-treatment system in a non-nuclear part of the facility.
“As a precaution, the company evacuated employees in the area near where the leak was found… Other employees remain in other areas of the plant. There’s no immediate danger to the public. Those units are operating normally,” said the Southern California Edison in a statement to Camp Pendleton Patch, reported the Huffington Post.
The alert was a Level Two, out of four emergency levels, and means potential substandard degradation in the level of safety of the plant. According to the Huffington Post, the alert was the lowest of the four possible emergency classifications used by the nuclear industry.
The alert at the plant was called off shortly after 6 p.m. and normal operations were resumed, the Orange County Emergency Operations center said in a statement, according to the L.A. Times.
