Diablo Canyon's Unit 2 shut down for refueling, maintenance

Unit 2 at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant was shut down Sunday for a scheduled refueling and maintenance outage.

In total, nearly 120,000 hours will be invested during the refueling. During the outage, more than 1,000 supplemental workers from around the country will provide a economic boost to the San Luis Obispo region as they stay at hotels and shop at local businesses.

Major work to be performed includes replacing a portion of the Unit 2 reactor fuel and performing maintenance and testing on systems and components that are not readily accessible during regular plant operation. Similar work was performed on Unit 1 during a planned refueling outage earlier this year.

No restart date was announced, but outages typically last about a month.

This story was originally published October 6, 2014 at 4:57 PM with the headline "Diablo Canyon's Unit 2 shut down for refueling, maintenance."