A lot of laboratory studies have shown that acoustic emission (AE) is a well suited technique to monitor stress corrosion cracking (SCC) during different kind of tests like slow strain rate or constant load tests. In principle, SCC could occur wherever a specific corrodent and sufficient tensile stresses coexist. Even if the medium is low corrosive and the stresses are not very intense, the damage can conduct to rapid and catastrophic damages because there is a synergistic interaction between corrosion process and mechanical effect. In the objective to monitor on-line this phenomenon on real structures, it seems reasonable to characterize acoustic emission during static U-bend tests which are, in term of stress intensity, very representative of what happens on plant. The present study is concerned with static tests conducted on a 316L stainless steel in hot concentrated MgCl2 media. The high sensitivity of AE to detect active cracks during their early stages of propagation is evidenced.