Indian Point officials say control room operators at the Indian Point Energy Center will shut down the unit 3 nuclear power plant for its 16th scheduled refueling outage around midnight tonight.

Plant owner Entergy says Unit 3 has been online generating electricity more than 97% of the time since it returned to service from its last refueling outage in April 2009.

During the planned outage, workers are expected to perform "hundreds of scheduled maintenance activities" and other improvements to the plant.

Control room operators are expected to remove the Indian Point 3 nuclear power plant in Buchanan from service tonight to repair a leak from a pipe that carries non-radioactive river water to the plant.