Last updated 3:10 p.m. Saturday

Unit 1 at the Limerick Generating Station nuclear plant was shut down early Saturday morning for what facility owner Exelon Generation called "planned inspections of its low-pressure turbine blades."

"The inspections will help ensure that Limerick Generating Station continues to operate safely, efficiently, and reliably and can only be performed when the unit is offline."

Unit 1 was previously shut down for about a month at the end of last winter while workers replaced about a third of the reactor's fuel and performed numerous "state-of-the-art equipment upgrades, extensive safety inspections and tests, and numerous plant improvements," the company said last March.

On April 19, Unit 1 was taken offline again following an electrical problem that caused the shutdown of the cooling pump for its generator. It returned to service a few days later.

In response to an inquiry from Patch, Exelon said Unit 1's low-pressure turbine blades were inspected during the refueling outage, but that they were being inspected again using a "state of the art technology not available earlier this year." The new technology was used to inspect the turbine blades on Unit 2 in May, the company said.

"The decision to inspect the Unit 1 turbine is consistent with Exelon’s safety-driven approach to ensure safe and reliable long-term operations," company spokesperson Dana Melia said via email.