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Germany's Emsland nuclear plant restart delayed to Tuesday

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German utility RWE said the restart of its Emsland nuclear power plant will be delayed until Tuesday, four days after it was taken off grid after a minor leak was detected. RWE had said on Friday the leakage at the 1,400 megawatt plant appeared to have occurred in a sample line used to monitor the boron content of reactor coolant. It said on earlier on Saturday the problem had been fixed and the plant would likely come back online around midday on Sunday. It later said new estimates showed the plant would go back on the grid on Tuesday, without citing any reason for the change. Friday's incident has had no safety implications for the staff or public and has been classified as a Level 0 event in the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), which indicates minor or no relevance for safety, RWE said. The Environment Ministry of the German state of Lower Saxony said on Friday that no radioactivity had seeped out of the northern German plant due to the leakage. (Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Alison Williams)