More output is OK'd for Vt. nuclear plant

WASHINGTON -- A government advisory panel has recommended that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approve a 20 percent increase in the output of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, though some specialists said more study was needed to determine if the 33-year-old plant could handle the stresses, government officials said yesterday.

The NRC's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, a group of technical specialists, concluded last week that the ''uprate" would not create undue safety risks. All that remains before Entergy Corp., which owns and operates the plant, can move ahead with the increase is approval by the NRC.

But some are criticizing the agency for not heeding calls from the state of Vermont and others to first conduct a more thorough safety assessment, including testing whether the plant's machinery can withstand the higher temperatures and pressures resulting from the increased output.

''Of the nine reactors that were built in New England, four were shut down and none of them lasted to the end of their planned life," said Ray Shadis, technical adviser to the New England Coalition, a nuclear watchdog group established in 1971. ''All were shut down after some extraordinary inspection. Vermont Yankee has been in operation longer than any other and what the public is being asked to believe is that, somehow, it is the exception to the rule."

The Vermont Yankee plant, located in Vernon, near the borders with Massachusetts and New Hampshire, went on line in November 1972 and now provides for one-third of Vermont's electricity use and a smaller share of other New England states' power.

Entergy, which also operates the Pilgrim plant in Plymouth, purchased Vermont Yankee in 2002 for $180 million and applied a year later to upgrade the plant to generate 20 percent more power.

That review process is now nearing completion.

''The Entergy application for the extended power uprate at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Station should be approved," the advisory panel's chairman, Graham B. Wallis, told NRC chairman Nils J. Diaz in a seven-page assessment dated Jan. 4. ''A number of members of the public asked for a more extensive inspection, similar to that performed at the Maine Yankee plant," which was shut down in 1996, the assessment continued. ''Based on the results of the inspection that was performed [last year]. . . such as extensive inspection is not warranted."

Neil Sheehan, a regional spokesman for the NRC in Philadelphia, said yesterday that the panel ''did not identify any reasons why the Vermont Yankee uprate could not be safely implemented."

But before final approval of the uprate is granted, the Vermont Public Service Board and the New England Coalition want the plant to undergo ''full power transient testing," in which the plant is run at 120 percent capacity and then is quickly shut down. They also want an assessment to determine whether the reactor could be cooled for a prolonged period in an emergency if its water pumps failed.

''It is quite likely that the NRC commission will tell Vermont Yankee to go ahead and do the power uprate, and the safety questions that are on the table can be dealt with after the fact," said Shadis. ''Before you run the marathon at 55, you should have a complete physical. . . . The same goes for the safety of these plants."

''The application has received a lot of scrutiny in an open process," Rob Williams, a spokesman for Vermont Yankee, said yesterday. ''We believe our plant is the perfect candidate for an uprate."

Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.